


The Dark Matter Between Us

by CultureisDarkBeer



Series: Rooted In Friendship [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-05-17 00:13:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 24,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14821577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CultureisDarkBeer/pseuds/CultureisDarkBeer
Summary: This story covers the before and after scenes during Season 3 and half of Season 4 It serves as the sequel to my story "The Beginning" and the prequel to my story "Falling".





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This Chapter is a summary of "The Blessing Way" and "Paperclip". It is merely to jog your memory of the events that occurred during those episodes. The story begins with Chapter 2.

Mulder had awakened from the dead in a strange place with welcoming strangers. They invited him to journey onto the bridge between the embodied souls and the disembodied. There he had made friends and looked into the depths of those that cared for him and his mission. He learned the quality of people out in the world, reminding him why it was so important to unearth the truth.

Scully had turned away from her logic, from the laws of science and government, and the motivation inside her to make her parents proud even if they disagreed in her direction. In all these ways, she had failed. Instead she used her instincts and ran into the night blind with only his drive to charge her purpose. The cross of gold lay on the nightstand, untouched from the night he lay in her guest bedroom. Now with the loss of her partner returning it to her neck felt like hypocrisy. Mulder was presumed dead and the ones that sent him into the ground also ended Scully’s life as an agent. It was the ultimate of shame, but it never ceased her need, so Scully called out to Mulder within her dreams and he answered.  

Mulder returned to her as she knew he would and they revived their quest. A quest that cost the lives of those they loved, his father and now her sister. It was one thing to willingly give up their own lives, but when the sacrifices extended, the guilt and the loss would never be recovered.

They had unearthed a filing system of medical files camouflaged inside a mountain posing as a mining company. A logging of DNA, tissue, and smallpox vaccines. For what goal they were yet to know, but their names were clear. Mulder had been chosen and then cast aside, but for Scully, the rage and the mystery of purpose continued. Samantha still remained a question mark burning the hole in Mulder’s existence, as well as the nagging feeling that misery and pain surrounded him and those around him caught it like a virus and paid for it with their suffering.

Looking into Scully’s eyes he couldn’t deny her request to see her sister even if it meant relinquishing the truth. If anyone knew of the loss of a sister it was him. Mulder’s heartbeat quickened when they stumbled upon the Well Manicured Man that spoke of a truth. The 1947 Roswell crash. The ending of WWII. Exploiting scientists from the Nazis for their knowledge to assist creating ultimate super soldiers from human alien hybrids. The data had been gathered for post-apocalyptic identification - smallpox vaccinations. Their lives in danger because Mulder was a threat of exposure even if the truth was more than they thought him or Scully would ever know.

When the game of hot potato ended, Alex Krycek was the one caught holding the tape and ran off to sell the information to the highest bidder.

Skinner for his loyalty was met with distrust. Questionable motive or not, Skinner would protect Mulder and Scully like he always did and prevent the Smoking Man from getting in their way by threatening him with the knowledge Albert Holsteen had inside his head.

The Smoking Man preferred to think of himself as the devil, as the originator and controller of pure evil, but Skinner had met the devil long ago, Smoking Man’s evil was no match. Mulder and Scully would be safe along with their careers for the time being. Mulder believed it was about fate, but Scully, she had heard the truth and now she wanted answers…..


	2. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We begin this story after the events of "Paperclip" and into the episodes "D.P.O." and "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"

The autumn brought forth an early evening, signifying the beginning of long periods of harsh loneliness and numb frostbite. Mulder sat on the couch of his dark apartment his back pressed into the worn leather his hands busy flipping pages of notes and fragments of hope. Scully now shared much more with him than an office. They had a connection, much closer than simple circumstance yet Scully had backed off. Turned down his invitation to go through some casework at his apartment. He wanted to talk more about their experience, put more of the pieces together, but Scully was acting like she rather forget. Her focus had been on her sister’s funeral and then getting back to their work. Scully’s state of raw abandonment of anything remotely supernatural could swallow one’s sanity whole; dawn by dusk he felt his own reason slipping through his fingers. Mulder put the papers into their folder and laid his head gently on his pillow. The television keeping a watchful eye. His eyelids fluttered shut and he allowed himself a quick smile. Reminding himself that Scully dreamt about him. 

His own dream was not as pleasant. It woke him in a cold sweat. His television had gone out and his eyes had no light to adjust. It sent a chill up his spine.  An emptiness filled him as if the earth had been wiped clean, blown away in a freak storm. As if all plant life was gone. Everything had dissolved like it was never there at all, like the universe hadn’t begun or perhaps never was. In the darkness he couldn’t get a sense that anything was important at all - life, death, pain. Mulder didn’t move, instead he waited for dawn to come and kiss the land to remind him he wasn’t alone. To acknowledge a whole planet of other sentient beings who live and love. But for now all he had was a starless sky, even the moon wouldn’t shine, leaving Mulder blind, with a heaviness in his chest and a keen sense of foreboding. 

*

The darkness swirled around Scully’s curled form lying in her bed, tendrils of bleak reminders of her solitude. The silence echoing in her ears was the constant white noise that never shut up. Her head swam in the fire burning inside, the only smouldering embers of a time where there had been other presences with her, around her, in her. Performing acts out of her control, never knowing how it would end. But now, the void had been slowly filled with a cold, howling storm of fear that refused to ever let up. She was completely and utterly alone in her experience. Everything she had ever believed and built her life around now hid frightened, shivering, behind an unseen cloud.  Where was her reality? Her deepest fears clawed at the base of her throat and buried themselves in her chest, quickening the gentle thud of her heart. With everything they shared, she alone had held a chip in her neck.  A tape of the truth nearly cost them it all, but the truth was buried inside her. Shutting out the plague of unknown, she drifted into a world of her own, memories dancing with fantasies until the line between them was blurred. She took solace in her dreams; a transient fortress that only she could enter. Escaping reality was the easy part. There was only so long she could hide before life started breaking down her walls. Then what might be left of her sanity?

*

Weeks later, they were back at work, no one questioning Mulder’s death, Scully’s suspension and reinstatement, Skinner’s increased fidgeting with his glasses, or that the Smoking Man had increased his smoking to three packs a day. Instead, they were back investigating x-files, ignoring their attraction as much as they ignored the ramifications of their most recent experiences.

 

*[D.P.O.]*

 

“Mulder, I have enough to do without wasting a night playing games,” Scully scowled putting up a weak fight.

“Scully, most likely, Darin Peter Oswald will get out on bail, come hunt us down and we’ll be lit up like Christmas trees. Tonight we live.”

*

“We’re living it up now,” Scully said sarcastically as they entered The Lone Gunman’s lair.

“I want to play that karate game Darin was playing,” she replied when Mulder asked her which game she was trying first.

“Virtua Fighter? Nice choice,” said Langly. He loaded the game and handed Scully the controller.

“It’s hard to believe there is someone left in existence that has never played a video game,” Byers commented. 

“Dana Scully has her hands on my joystick. I have died and gone to heaven,” added Frohike as he entered the room. 

“That was bad even for you Frohike,” Mulder replied, “Keep your eyes on the screen, she’s going to kick your ass.” 

“What do each of these buttons do?” Scully asked the room, pressing all of them simultaneously, her fighter looking as though it was performing a breakdancing move.

Mulder slid behind her and placed his hands gently over hers performing the different combinations. It posed a distraction Scully refused to acknowledge as puffs of warm breath threaded out of his lips onto Scully’s neck, his arms around her figure as they worked in tandem to destroy Langly.

“I think you guys are cheating. Two against one,” Langly frowned as the computer yelled, “Finish him.”

Scully smiled. She liked this game and though she rather not admit it, liked the company. There was something about those guys that made her feel young inside, that woke up the pure side of her, the best side. 

“Who’s next to be annihilated?” Scully challenged with a new ray of confidence.

Several hours and games later, even Mulder had grown tired of being beaten by her. The guys had fallen asleep, passed out randomly around the television. Mulder was stretched along a couch that was probably somebody’s bed half the time and Scully was sitting beneath him on a pillow on the floor working through the eighth world of Mario Bros. Mulder rubbed her arm while watching her, fading in and out of consciousness. Scully liked how good she was at video games. It allowed her to use the reflexes of her mind and her hands, guessing and calculating every move and obstacle until it all slowed, and predicting the computer’s moves was as easy as basic math. Mulder laughed and cheered when she saved the princess. She looked at him and smiled, their gaze lingering as her tongue consoled her lips. Tonight Scully didn’t feel as isolated as she had lately, and even through all that, the thing between them was still there. The one that they never had to speak. It was there in their laughter, in the soft way they touched each other, and in their energy vibrating in its unique way,  the perfect compliment of the other. It made Scully’s heart strong. His smile alone burnished her soul into a beauty it could never have achieved on its own. Before they met they were one, now they were each half of a team, yet somehow so much more than ever before.

*[Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose]*

“So what do you make of all we witnessed Scully?” Mulder asked sitting on the passenger side happy to let Scully drive them home.  

“Well, if we believe Clyde Bruckman’s premonition, you die by your own hand and I live forever.” Scully smiled wide and swayed her head in a small victory dance.

“Clyde said you didn’t die, he didn’t say you live forever. Maybe you evolve into something else, or turn into a spirit, or join others in the afterlife somewhere. Transform into pure consciousness. Even if he’s wrong about that, I’d put Clyde as a better psychic than Boggs ever was. At least he ventured a guess that it was my Knicks t-shirt.” Mulder tossed a sunflower seed into his mouth and cracked it between his molars. His tongue working overtime. “Scully, I was supposed to die by the knife of the killer, but you changed the timeline. Does that mean it now follows a timeline where I die from autoerotic asphyxiation or did you saving me prevent that?”

Scully shook her head. “Clyde was the one that died of asphyxiation. Albeit not autoerotic. Maybe he got confused. Either way Mulder, you shouldn’t take the chance. If times get that bad give me a call.” 

Mulder’s eyebrows shot up so fast they almost hit the roof of the car. Did she just say what he thought she said? He bent forward to examine her face, but she was engrossed in driving, so he put that in the file of Scully mysteries and popped another sunflower seed.

Scully’s mind was traveling. Psychics and premonitions, visions. As with most cases she had started it believing that her thoughts and facts were grounded only for everything to take a hard left. Mulder excited with each turn a case took, that the new destination maybe beautiful, bewitching even, yet she held fear for everything unknown. That they may come like hands on the wheel of the car veering them off to the unexpected. Her heart beat harder. She was secure in her thoughts, but that was only a temporary destination, she was a simple visitor. When the sun set and she awoke tomorrow in her bed she would be on the same course she was on before in the landscape she knew so well. Folding clothes, making coffee, paying bills, breakfast, and off to work. There she would stay until another case was blown onto their laps. Then her emotions would build again to alter her thoughts once more. Mulder would be there to join her, gleefully diving in without caution, as they entered another place, another possibility, another breath-taking view of an alternate life.


	3. The One Where Mulder & Scully Have Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following is around the episodes, "The List", "2Shy", and "The Walk". 2shy is okay for the creepy gore factor, but none of them make my top 20. Did you know in "The List" that guy was supposedly reincarnated as a fly? Yeah, I did not pick up on that. Mulder and Scully are all work and a little play, but this chapter focuses on the others in the office. The ones that are actually their friends. They have friends besides The Lone Gunman. What?

“I guess if you had to pick from a list of what you wanted to be reincarnated as, there are worse things than a fly,” Mulder commented tossing out his darts and releasing a groan. Holly and Scully were closing in on him and Danny on what was supposed to have been a friendly game of darts. He should have guessed Scully would turn it into a deathmatch.  
“You know Mulder, you might have a more accurate throw if you weren’t taking fireball shots after each round. Remember, we have a date at the shooting range tomorrow,” Scully scolded him like a child as she pulled each dart from the board and tallied up his score.

Mulder saw the looks exchanged between Danny and Holly and immediately started his defense, “It’s time to update our firearm target scores for the files. It’s for the FBI.” He didn’t even seem to be convincing himself so he continued his previous topic. “If I was a fly I could have been on the wall during watergate or in the back door meetings concerning Paperclip.” Mulder took the last of his shots keeping an eye on Scully. She was retrieving her darts and the way she shifted her hips tempted Mulder, but his eyes gratefully behaved themselves. She had obviously beaten his score because she flirtatiously dropped the darts back into his hand, locking their glare. When she looked at him like that his heart and legs turned to Jello, but he’d never let on. Instead, he snarled back, pretty sure she was trying to distract them. From the look on Danny’s face it was working.

“I think, if we’re going to get reincarnated we should have BRB written into the headstones instead of RIP. Am I right Danny?” Mulder asked still attempting to distract Danny from Scully’s body.

Danny nodded as Mulder squeezed his shoulder. “How about just write on my tombstone, Guess I fucked up the first time,” Danny remarked and Mulder found it much funnier than it was.

Three more darts landed on the board and Danny was able to get him and Mulder back ahead of the women. Noticing the time, Holly decided to call it quits for the evening stating she needed to be up early.

“Holly, I want to thank you for the information on online dating attacks,” said Scully, “It was very useful in closing our case. I know getting that information so quickly can be tedious.”

“All in a day’s work Agent Scully.” Holly smiled back.

*

The next day at the shooting range...

The target rolled forward. It was a modest showing. One even tore through the center. Mulder knew as accurate as he was, Scully was better. This he always took with a sense of pride. She was his partner and he trusted her implicitly. Plus, he needed her trusty shot backing up his headstrong ways.

Scully set her target, aimed and squeezed in rapid succession. Mulder stood in awe. The results as he anticipated and hoped. She looked back and gave him a confident smile nodding his way. He nodded back. She had a smile that could change the world. And him if he ever let it. But there was something on his mind from the case they had just closed and he needed her reassurance.

“Scully, do you ever feel like I treat you like a woman.”

Scully laughed at the absurdity of the question. “I want you to treat me like a woman Mulder. What I don’t want is for you to view me as less than. I am different than you. Different strengths, different weaknesses. If you start making accommodations or assumptions, that’s when we’d have a problem.”

“I noticed the way that detective treated you and if I ever acted that way.. I guess my phrasing was wrong… what I meant to say...”

Scully interrupted him deciding it was best to let him off the hook early. “The answer is no Mulder. When we are focused on the case at hand I’ve never felt you look at me as anything other than an agent for the government.”

“Thanks. I think?”

“Although I can think of a few times we may have strayed from our professionalism,” Scully reminded him loading her gun’s magazine.

“I just don’t ever want to come off like that detective did. Trying to second guess what you can and can’t handle. While I might remind you we all don’t have superpowers, I believe you need to define your own limits.”

“I appreciate the courtesy Mulder…. And that you wait until afterhours to use your height as an advantage.”

“I would do no such thing,” Mulder said grinning through the words, “Just so we’re clear.”

She smiled back looking at him from the corner of her eye and reset her target.

*

“Before we begin the budgeting meeting, the DOD has requested we review with all our agents the steps for approval when investigating military men and codes of conduct,” Skinner said gruffly looking directly at Mulder.

They weren’t ten minutes into the meeting and Agent Russo was already complaining. “We go through this every year. We create the budget and x-files puts us in a position that we need to supersede the budget, and we miss our financials.”

“You’re not looking big picture,” Mulder interjected, “we consistently surpass our case completion rate goals. There’s a price to pay for everything.”

“That price, Agent Mulder,” the financial accountant added, “should not include all these rentals that you requested on the Bureau’s dime. According to these records, you basically own a company car.”

When Scully noticed the heat rising from Mulder’s collar, she lightly touched his arm with the palm of her hand and he kept his voice steady, “Where do you see me using the rental for personal issues?”

“I have final approval on all company issued cars. If there was something not fortuitous, it is brought to my attention. Any other issues or questions on this subject we’ll discuss offline,” Skinner said quickly stifling the subject.

Rudy from finance flicked on the overhead and placed his first slide depicting closed case rate verses funds allocated. Mulder hated these financial meetings with a passion. At the same time, he enjoyed the contrast of him and Scully to everyone else and he enjoyed her whispering her disapproval in his ear, which she was currently doing. “Mulder, how can they notice any trends when they have such violent swings?”

He leaned his body against hers and whispered back, “I’m not sure, to me that graph is like looking at a mountain range through a tennis racquet.”

Rudy cleared his throat, “As you can see x-files cases have taken a significant jump in completion rate with the addition of Agent Scully, but the spending has as well.”

“Why are we funding a team that’s cases are better handled by the DOD? The military filed a formal complaint declaring both Mulder and Scully in breach of code and procedure. On the last request form they actually justified the case citing astral projection. This case remains officially open. This is out of control,” Agent Russo said continuing his protests. It was obvious he was gunning for a promotion.

Mulder leaned back into Scully appreciating the closeness and lack of personal space, “This room Scully, is where hope goes to die.”

Scully straightened up and commanded the room. “It is an argument in futility. Without a clear understanding, you can’t possibly have an unbiased analysis.”

“Let’s refocus,” Skinner stated, “We should be brainstorming ideas to achieve next year’s budget.”

“How about brainstorming why this meeting should be over,” Danny yawned, giving Mulder an under the table low five.   

*

Holly walked into the lab and handed Danny the records he requested. The lab technician looked up from the microscope and waved at Holly. “I heard you and Danny went out with Mr. and Mrs. Spooky. I’m not going to deny the jealousy I feel that I missed a chance to hang out with Mulder.. I’ve been trying to get him to go bump in the night with me forever.”

“We hang out from time to time,” shrugged Holly, “They’re really a lot of fun.”

“So is it true? Is something going on with them?”

“I’m not sure,” Holly answered, “I think it's more that they look up to each other. It's more of a mutual respect… What do you think Danny, is there anything going on?”

“Nah, Mulder has his head buried in his work and the two of them get along in a way I don’t think you could do if they were under the sheets. There’s no animosity. Even when they disagree, they’re not fighting.. they honor each other. They may not have the same beliefs, but they believe in each other.”

“Well you two made me feel like shit for even bringing it up.”

“We just know them and when you do, you come to admire them,” Danny shrugged.

Chuck walked in half listening. He couldn’t help but add his own two cents. “Mulder and Scully.. You’ll never see another partnership like that. It’s why I love working with them and why I think we’re all loyal to them. It's refreshing to be around so much passion for beliefs and for the work. It’s like believing in Santa Clause. Of course, then Mulder will give you evidence to analyze that not only proves the existence of Santa Clause, but the Easter Bunny and the savage truth behind the tooth fairy.”

“What’s the savage truth?” the tech asked cautiously.

Chuck answered hauntingly waving his fingers at each side of his face. “She is a bone collector that pays for the privilege. An apparition that will someday come for the rest of you…”

Holly looked almost frightened.

Chuck smiled relaxing his arms. “I’m kidding. But you’re going to need to give up on Mulder.”

“Why?” the tech asked.

“Because, Scully will destroy anyone that even thinks about getting close to him. Anyway, no one can compete with that deep a spiritual connection.”

“So what’s the verdict?” Scully asked as she and Mulder made their way into the lab stifling the previous conversation among the staff.

“Condoms. With traces of acid and fertilizer,” the tech answered.

The tech observed as Scully looked over at Mulder and his nod was so small it was barely noticeable. His eyes didn’t leave hers until he approached the coffee maker and poured himself a cup. Then he poured one for Scully tossing some sweetener in it and giving it a stir. He walked over to her and she took her coffee from his hand. Mulder leaned in so close that if they were the same height they’d be kissing. Their breathing naturally slowed to match the others and she imagined their hearts doing the same. Scully looked up at Mulder locking their eyes. His eyebrows lifted, his head tilting slightly to the right. Scully shook her head. Mulder rolled his eyes and gave her a wry grin. Turning in unison, Mulder re-attached himself to Scully’s lower back as they went to leave.

“Wait," said the tech, “So what do the results indicate?”

“Arsen,” Mulder and Scully said in unison.

The tech was confused. “What was the condom used for?”

“A fuse,” Scully explained, and with that Scully opened the door and they left.

“See?” Holly, Chuck, and Danny all said together.

The tech’s eyes widened, “Spooky.”


	4. Sunday Funday

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following takes place post "Oubliette" on a Sunday in November. Let no man stand between Scully and her pizza.

A week post Oubliette…

Music rushed into Scully’s ears like beach waves over virgin sand. The band had started their set under the stage canopy shielding them from the cool wind and November sun. Sizzling fried dough covered in powdered sugar tickled her nose. Mulder jogged over and smiled, his hair slightly damp from the run, his bib covering his shirt displaying his number.

“Second place is quite an accomplishment Mulder. Twenty three miles in three hours and thirty five minutes? Now if we can only keep your gun in your holster, you’ll catch the bad guys every time.” Scully couldn’t help but tease him. At the same time she was proud of her partner. The Chesapeake Bay bridge run was nothing to shrug at. She had come in seventh place among the women which only signaled to her she needed to train harder.

“The only thing I’m thinking about is something to eat,” Mulder replied. “You want to grab something here or head into town?”

Scully was sympathetic to his plight. “I’m thinking pizza.”

Mulder laughed. “You’re always thinking pizza…. Okay, let’s head out.”

 *

Mulder mused as the melted cheese stretched and dripped, swinging like a vine until it clung to the bottom of Scully’s chin. She giggled, lifting it off her freckled skin and raised it up feeding it to herself like a scantily clad handmaid feeding grapes to Dionysus. Scully eating anything she enjoyed was almost like witnessing a divine experience, but Scully turned pizza into outright food porn and the more toppings, the better. Today it was the fresh and fragrant veggie delight with the addition of pepperoni because… well, why not. If you’re going to have sex with it, might as well throw in some meat. At least when ordering Mulder never had to be concerned with Scully going healthy and trying whole wheat or bean sprouts. Not with pizza. It was extra cholesterol, hold the fiber.

They were now back in D.C. and at Scully’s favorite joint. She liked it because they used a brick oven and loaded the crust with herbs. It made the perfect combination of light velvety inside and crunchy, but not burnt on the bottom. That’s the way she described it. Mulder was relishing the way she closed her eyes with each bite, savoring it on her tongue before she swallowed. It got him all bubbly inside. Well, it was either that or the garlic from the pizza.

“There’s the National Harbor Christmas tree lighting tonight if you’re interested. They’ve got fireworks on the waterfront and everything,” Mulder suggested.

“Let’s go,” Scully mumbled, slightly agitated she had to stop chewing in order to reply.  

“How do you not weigh three hundred pounds?” Mulder asked shaking his head.

“Exercise and I create a weekly caloric intake plan so I can splurge on some days and cut back on others,” Scully explained taking the last slice, loading it with Parmesan cheese and red pepper flakes, sending it to its rightful resting place where it will be blessed to be reincarnated as Scully fuel. “Heredity and a high metabolism help.”

Mulder nodded slurping the last of his Coke. “I’ve got to make a quick stop at the supermarket, then you can drop me off so I can shower and change and we’ll meet back at my place?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Scully said and went to grab the check, but Mulder snagged it.

“Hey, I should pay, I ate more than you did,” Scully protested.

“Yeah,” Mulder replied sliding out of the booth, “But I enjoyed it more.”

 *

Roaming down the aisles of the supermarket Mulder lost Scully, obviously distracted by the sale on pudding and donuts. Mulder meandered over and smiled at her. “What?” she asked innocently.

“We just ate pizza.”

Scully sighed, “We might be hungry later.”

Mulder looked over at the deli counter, “How about sandwiches?” His eyes grew wide as he approached the glass. “They’ve got Westphalian ham. I used to eat that at the vineyard in the summertime running around the beach with my sister. The sight of that ham brings me back.”

The guy at the deli counter sliced him a piece to try and he held it up to his nose and inhaled, “I can still feel the warmth of the sun on my face, hear the lapping of the waves as I scrambled over the rocks with my friends.. The salt water stinging the scrapes on our knees… our battle wounds…”

Scully pushed back Mulder’s bangs exposing his forehead for an examination. “Mulder, maybe you should eat a banana.. I think you have a buildup of lactic acid from the run causing a lack of oxygen to your brain.”

Mulder didn’t answer, busy chewing, he offered a sample to Scully, but his attention was elsewhere. Scully followed his eyes which were enjoying the sight of a young woman smiling back at him. Scully elbowed him, “Why don’t you go introduce yourself?”

Mulder, being caught got instantly shy and fell into his regular form of denial. “What? It’s fine Scully.”

“Don’t you ever consider wanting to live with someone who doesn’t have to be reinflated periodically? She’s very attractive Mulder, go say hi.. But I might put back the Little Smokies, she might get the wrong idea.”

Mulder smiled. “You’re right, I need a more accurate betrayal..,” he said and picked up a pack of footlongs waving it towards Scully before tossing it into the cart. Scully watched in amusement of Mulder on the prowl. She never appreciated him ogling women, but shy and vulnerable Mulder she found kinda cute.

When he returned it was with a tail between his legs. He put up his index finger and shook his head saying shortly, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh no, you didn’t tell her about bigfoot..”

Mulder frowned “Very funny. No, I’m just not good at picking women. Last woman I hit on had male genitalia and this one is a nun.”

“No.”

“Oh yes. They should be required to wear their flying hats or something… worst of all I asked a nun if she wanted me to sniff her cantaloupes to check if they were ripe..”

Scully busted out laughing. “You did not.”

Mulder walked the other way, “This is why I don’t talk to you about this kind of stuff.”  

As she followed him down the cleaning isle she yelled, “Mulder wait, I need to pick up some laundry detergent.”

He stopped, but kept his distance, still fearing an onslaught of jokes. He pointed at the ironing board as Scully walked by, “Did you know, all ironing boards are simply surfboards that decided to grow up and get a job?”

Scully looked concerned, “Come on Mulder, before you accuse the free sample lady of hitting on you.”

Standing in line at the checkout, Mulder quickly grew bored, deciding to peruse the Enquirer. “How come nobody disappears into the Bermuda triangle anymore?” he asked placing his items on the black conveyor.

“I don’t know, but we may have found Elvis,” Scully mumbled.

Mulder’s eyebrows lifted as he noticed the checkout boy sporting thick Elvis sideburns and a spiked collar. He leaned into Scully and mumbled back, “He’s looking good for sixty.”

“He looks fantastic for an eight year old corpse.” Scully muttered under her breath.

Mulder looked back at her with upturned lips and his sad puppy dog frown.

*

Later that night at National Harbor…

Wrapped up in their winter coats, Scully’s gloved hands buried deep in her pockets, they made their way to the water’s edge with the rest of the crowd. The Christmas tree was lit and the orchestra was playing their holiday jingles. The fireworks, following the music's crescendo, rocketed towards their sky-bound destiny in fiery sparks of vivid color underneath the backdrop of the blackened night sky. Giddy, with stolen breath, Sully unknowingly reached for Mulder’s hand. He felt the small brown leather inside his palm and gave it a squeeze, placing his arm around her to rest on her shoulder. It was a shared experience that held them spellbound in rapt silence with the rest of the spectators.

The exception being some startled gasps from the young children until all that was left was the silence there was at the beginning. Then like a tsunami the applause rippled forwards through the chilly park to the musicians and the light show coordinators, the MC thanking everyone for coming. En-masse the people turned to leave, the air left with a tincture of gunpowder, reminding Scully of her days as a child on the military base.

*

Back in Alexandria, they decided to stop for a nightcap at an ice cream shop a couple blocks down the road from Mulder’s apartment that served real custard ice cream.

The place was crowded for November, so instead of eating inside, they strolled around the block.  Mulder took a deep breath savoring the crisp night air and how much Scully had an influence on his life. There was a time when fireworks would have symbolized demons to him. In the burning colours his mind would create a narrative, seeking meaning where there was none. Reminding him of the bright lights and frozen helplessness of the night his sister was taken. Tonight would have either filled him with dread or inspired a whole new crusade. But with Scully there, he thought more pragmatically, simply observing igniting minerals crafted to draw certain colors and designs, bursting at high speed.  

Mulder took a lick of his ice cream taking only half strides for Scully’s sake. “We deserved a good night like this after that last case we had,” he mused.

“Mulder, that was you on a case. I was a mere spectator.”

Mulder stared down at his feet avoiding the cracks, “I might have been a little headstrong.”

“A little headstrong? Mulder, you have to admit, these cases that get you so consumed usually have something to do with a victimized woman.”

“It may… _may_ push me forward, but I’m not one dimensional Scully. Is that how you see me?”

“What I see is you getting a hunch on a case, afraid of my scrutiny, so you take off faster than I can follow. My job then becomes siphoning out the facts and testing them against your theories. It becomes slightly one sided. I’m an agent too, not just your science lab partner.”

Mulder stopped walking, lifting his eyebrows slightly inward. “Is it too late for an apology?”

“I don’t want an apology Mulder,” Scully said shortly, licking her ice cream like a child that was told that tomorrow was the first day of school.

“In the end, you believed in me, while I was nothing but an eye roll to the other agents. Spooky Mulder at it again.”

They resumed their walk, Scully assuming the burden of avoiding the sidewalk cracks. “That experience you had of your sister’s abduction left you with an ability to see what others can’t. To have connections with people that others don’t, but I didn’t join the FBI to be a passive follower Mulder.”

Mulder nodded. “Duly noted Scully.”

They stopped again, pausing to stare at the stars. Mulder looked over to find Scully’s longing gaze and wasn’t certain if it was for him or the ice cream. When she realized she’d been caught she quickly asked, “What flavor did you get?”

“Vanilla,” Mulder said taking a long sweep with his tongue around the cone. “You want to taste?” He lowered the cone and she took a bite, he tilted it a little too much guaranteeing to leave some ice cream on her nose.

“How do you eat a cone without sprinkles? It’s almost criminal.” Scully asked pulling out a napkin from her coat to clean her face.

“I like nuts,” Mulder shrugged, raising the cone above his mouth, catching the drips before taking a big bite.

Scully’s evil grin returned. “Oh. Then I guess next time I’ll introduce you to the stockboy,” Scully said swaying into him, purposely bouncing her shoulder into his arm.

Mulder made the rest of his cone disappear in one clean bite as they continued drunkenly walking down the street casually bumping into each other and smiling into the night.


	5. Dialectical Investigative Techniques for the Yin and Yang

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Nisei", "731", and Revelations. Mulder gets closer to the truth only for it to slip through his fingers while Scully gets closer to her own truth. The Syndicate may have their plans, but CSM operates within the group and outside of it, for he has plans of his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While not immediately apparent, Scully has gifts beyond whatever was done to her. She demonstrates psychic ability and has visions and connections, even before William. She brought that with her to the x-files. Season 3 hints at a lot of these gifts and I enjoy exploring the idea.

“Did you locate the briefcase that Zama left on the train?” Mulder asked aggressively, not hiding his frustrations leaking onto his sleeve.

“Yeah, I got it right here,” Scully answered with all the patients she could muster. Mulder's mood was wearing thin and today was the wrong day to cross her.

“This doesn’t look like the same briefcase.” She could see Mulder beginning his spin and she lifted her chin waiting for the rumble.

“It’s the one they gave me, the one they said you gave the conductor... These aren’t the same journals. They’ve all been rewritten.” Mulder shouted, but it didn’t frighten Scully. If anything, it made her adrenaline flow preparing to fight back.

“Mulder,”

“They’re getting away with it Scully.” Mulder was flailing. Throwing his tantrum. She got the prestigious honor of being the punching bag. Only he wasn’t the one that had been a lab rat in a train car. Their fight was imminent.

“They’ve gotten away with it Mulder. The bodies at the leper colony have all been removed.”

“I know what I saw on that train car. It wasn’t a leper and it wasn’t human.”

“And I know what I saw at the research facility. It was barely recognizable as human. Don’t you see Mulder? You’re doing their work for them, you’re chasing aliens that aren’t there, helping them to create a story to cover the shameful truth. And what they can’t cover they apologize for. Apology has become policy.”

“I don’t need an apology for the lies. I-I don’t care about the fictions they create to cover their crimes. I want them held accountable for what did happen, I want an apology for the truth.”

She had enough of his pontificating. “What about an apology, and accountability for what was done to me? I was the one taken, my name is in those files.”

Scully wasn’t going to argue with him. Didn’t _want_ to argue with him and he was looking for a fight. She gathered her stuff and headed for the door.

“Scully wait.”

“I’m going home Mulder.”

*

A series of incandescent flashes and booms lay in desert plains. A windy gush of flames. More flashes, explosions giving rise to billowy mushroom caps on a quickly darkening horizon. Maniacal laughter of a man belching smoke rings upwards, floating ever so slowly only to be engorged by twisting shape shifting thunderous lightning. Scully bolted upright from her bed. It was a frightful nightmare, but only a dream.

At 3:13 A.M. the phone rang in Mulder’s apartment. The red glow of the digital clock and fuzzy white haze of the television illuminating the room. A cloud cover outside hid the moon and street lamps. Mulder reached for the receiver, the couch crunching underneath him as he said his name.

“Mulder, it’s me. Did I wake you?”

“Not exactly.  Did something happen?”

“My dreams are keeping me awake.”

Mulder stretched and let his head rest on his hand. “What are they about?”  
“I’m not sure. Explosions. I’m in a battlefield of some kind. There’s this faceless man with smoke coming out of his head. I had asked Agent Pendrell if he believed these dreams could have been side effects of having that chip in my neck.”

Mulder flexed and wiggled his feet. His toenails almost ready for the Guiness Book, he retreated to the  bathroom and retrieved a nail clipper. Balancing his foot, he sent his keratinised cells into the garbage can as he sat on the toilet, the phone buried in the crook of his neck. “And?”

“He said no.”  

Mulder clipped at his pinky toe. “I should warn you, he asked me about you.”

“What about?” Well, that stoked her curiosity he thought. Mulder admired his work and shifted to his other foot.

“Wanted to know if you were seeing anyone and what I thought of him asking you out to dinner.”

“Aaaand?”

“I told him to go for it.” Mulder tapped the clipper on the side of the can and opened the mirror, putting it away and retrieving the scissors. His new mission: to clip all rebellious nose hairs.

“Mulderrrr. He’s a sweet guy, but..”

“Scully, no one understands more than I do that it’s difficult to find a common ground with someone.” Proud of his grooming prowess, he retrieved a new tool and began tweezing any hair threatening to give him unibrow. “The work you and I do changes our view of the world and with it our ability to find importance in the mundane and the fabricated world we see everyone else living in.” See Scully, I can indulge in philosophical self-examination. His battle with hair growth victorious, he emptied his bladder, indifferent to Scully possibly hearing the echoes on the other end. Now he headed to the kitchen in search of juice.

Scully had silenced into slow breaths. He could hear the anguish in the sigh she let into his ear. “I have yet to receive any answers concerning my sister’s death. Like she never existed.”

The distress in her voice halted him mid-step. “I’ll go up the chain, see if I can get congress to put some pressure on pushing the case forward.” A sudden need to kill anyone that caused her pain rose in his gut and his fist involuntarily clenched.

“I’d appreciate that Mulder.”

Mulder’s brow furrowed. “Scully, it’s your sister. Of course I would do that.”  

He listened to her breaths and imagined holding her, comforting her. He wanted the world for her. There was nothing he wouldn’t sacrifice to make her happy. “Scully, don’t-don’t be like me. I want more for you than for you to surrender to the notion of ever pursuing a personal life.”

“Mulder I never said..”

“I know.” He nodded his head and brought the bottle of OJ with him as he walked back to the couch. For a brief flash he saw himself relinquishing his pursuits, letting them win, so she could be happy. The world going to hell while they ran off to some deserted island, just him and her. Desire surged within him and he swallowed it back down reminding himself that when you sleep with someone, you take the risk of losing them. Mulder didn’t take risks when it came to Scully.

Scully’s voice brought him back to her. “Well, I better get back to bed. Don’t want to be late for work.”

*

He was accused of being in love with her. Maybe obsession was a better word, but how do you not love your own creation?

Smoke billowed from his lips as if from a coal smokestack. With each inhale the toxins filled his lung’s superior lobe and tickled his bronchial tubes. The nicotine had him flying high today. A purely hedonistic indulgence, blanketing the mind in desire and overlaying it in satisfaction.

“Today marks a very important day,” The Smoking Man said addressing his accuser. “He who controls the knowledge controls the world.”

“When you said you needed a progress update, I thought I’d be making a trip back to the states, I didn’t realize you would be flying out to meet me. I’ll admit it was a pleasant surprise.” Her voice had a sultry tone that slithered around his head. A delightful corruption of the senses. She took another step towards him, her soft supple lips pressed against the crusty mountain range of his own. He quickly deserted them for his nicotine craving. “Dubai is more enjoyable this time of year. Besides, the entire North America might as well be wire tapped. There is no safe space.”

With a flick of her tar colored curls she was all business. “These are all the files I’ve collected with side notes on the abductees. One stack is the scientific journals of the actual tests. The other is their reports of their experiences as what they believe happened, their overall health, and mindset. Every abductee I’ve spoken to, no matter where on the planet, seems all too eager to open up to me.”

“Good. Diana,” CSM said with another long draw on his fiery cancer stick. “I need you to safeguard something for me. It needs to be kept in a place only you and I know.”

CSM handed her the lockbox. “May I ask what is in this?”

“Translations from a scientist’s journal. The closest we’ve come to creating a genuine super soldier.”

“What was its capabilities?” Diana asked expressionless, keeping her eyes locked to his as if hung on his every word.

“It contained an alien’s dermis and had toxic blood, but it had the correct percentage mix and DNA sequencing. This hybrid has immunities for everything and what it doesn’t have, its cells have the knowledge to create.”

“Did it die in the explosion?”

“No. It was subjected to bullets, the strongest doses of radiation, to no ill effect.”

“Is it still alive?”  
“No. We finally terminated it once we had what we needed.”

“How?”

“Base of the neck. Otherwise, it has the potential to live forever.”

“So if this is the answer, why are we hiding it?”

“There’s a missing piece. Even with the knowledge, it is not useful unless it can be replicated. We must be able to attach it to a human embryo and our own DNA. For that we will need immunity to Purity. What good is the weapon if we’re not around to use it.”

“What about the implants?”

“They cannot guard against physical weapons or enable shapeshifting, and other talents.”  
“So once you have that answer… then what?”

“There’s a woman, Mulder’s partner. She has been exposed to the tests. Just as the others did, she discovered and removed the chip. The onset of cancer will be next and with it, a search for a cure. One only I can provide and when I do, I will also gain Mulder’s trust, and Scully’s acceptance.”

“You believe Mulder will join us? Just because you provide a cure to his partner’s cancer?”

“You don’t know him with Scully. She is his weakness and will be his downfall.”

Diana puffed out her chest and cocked her head. After all, Mulder had shown no resistance when she had decided to pursue her own interests. “And you believe she is capable of carrying this embryo?”

“I picked her because of her capabilities. Those that she has exhibited from a very young child.”

Diana seemed to be missing the big picture. For over twenty years he had secretly mapped out his plan to not only have the power to fight the aliens, but to control the world. Spender had two secrets. One aligned with The Syndicate, to protect the ones he loved by assisting the aliens to convert Earth into a human/alien hybrid slave race. The other, to create a more perfect being. One to not only defeat the aliens, but would allow him to create a world in his image.. That answered to only him. He would not be alone of course, there would be others. Diana, Fox, Jeffrey, and those that found themselves worthy. Bill Mulder’s goals of a vaccine were ineffectual. The answer was in using their technology against them to create a standing, virtually indestructible, army immune to the effects of any weapon - biological, chemical, bullets, or bombs. Then him and Mulder could rule the world with Scully as the mother of a new race, one created in his image. The creation of his army and with it, not only the cure to all disease, but of death. Only he would choose who would survive.

“And to think, it could have been me,” Diana egotistically postulated her face twisting into a painful grimace.

“It was never you Diana,” CSM snapped, growing frustrated. “Only Dana has such capabilities. She is the one.”

Diana ignored his outburst and placed a hand on her hip. “Maybe your love lies in taking your son’s conquests.”

“I do nothing of the sort,” he laughed.

“How could you love me when you’re in love with her?”

“Not me. Fox. He let you leave. Walk from his life. Scully, he knows, she is the one.”

 *

What sounded as a lion’s roar burst through a pillar of fire 20,000 feet into the air, sucking the earth with it, tossing the living like ragdolls. God’s fury rained down in white hot ash and molten rocks battling triangular ships and oval discs housing man’s hubris while blue-violet-white light shot down like lasers onto a trembling ground. Blast upon blast inside the cloud of red, orange, and black. A saber of light emerged followed by a blinding flash, a thin lateral sheet of pure white blanketing the earth at lightning speed towards oblivion and Scully gasped, jolted back into the present. She gripped tight on the arm of the airplane’s chair.    

“Usually we experience a little turbulence before you white knuckle it Scully.”

“What?” she breathed out, distracted. Her hand came to rub the back of her neck brushing over the scar from the metal object no longer imbedded in her body. Their eyes met as Scully lifted her chin and a wave of insecurities came flooding in afraid Mulder might see into her thoughts and chastise her accordingly. “I’m fine Mulder.”

Mulder sucked in his left cheek in order to comfort it with his tongue. “I-I know I bitch about no one ever following my instincts, but I should have followed yours. A-and if it wasn’t for you digging in your heels, Kevin wouldn’t be alive.”

The air in the cabin was suffocatingly thick, and the low hum of the airplane’s engine was beginning to make Scully’s stomach turn. Mulder meant well, but the priest was right, some things weren’t meant for him. “Kevin said him and I would see each other again.”

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Then I believe you will,” he said softly. Mulder picked up the can on his tray and gulped down his root beer giving his mind time to form thought. “When I worked serial cases years ago I came across very intelligent people believing and killing in the name of false prophets.” Mulder finished his soda and Scully clenched her jaw and stiffened, preparing for his attack. “Sometimes these experiences allow us to become jaded and not always see the truth in front of us.”

“So what is your conclusion from this case Mulder?”

The deep grayish blue of Mulder’s eyes flowed inside her like the tide, warming her and washing out her defenses. They crinkled at the corners and lifted her spirits. “That I need to pay more attention to my recycling habits. The battle of good over evil might depend on it.”

“Just for that I’m stealing your cookie,” Scully beamed, lifting the chocolate chip macadamia nut from his tray.

“Let’s not pretend Scully,” He replied deepening his gaze, removing a morsel from the cookie in her hand and popping it into his mouth, “You were taking it anyway.”


	6. Hoop Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place after "War of the Coprophages".  
> There's nothing like Scully in jealousy mode and she does not play well with others in her sandbox. Although, she didn't pay Bambi much attention. After all, it was no place for an entomologist.  
> Mulder, are you sure it wasn't a girly scream?

“You tracked me down,” Dr. Masao Matsumoto said to the man currently blowing Morley cancer smoke into his face.

“When you left the states you showed up on the radar.” CSM took another long drag of his cigarette, his glare directed towards the doctor.

“I have family here I’m visiting.” Dr. Matsumoto explained.

“I have what you want,” CSM removed the journal from his bag and handed it to him. “It was Dr. Zama’s. It contains the missing pieces you need.”

“Where is Dr. Zama?”

“There was a train accident.” CSM took a satisfying puff and said shortly, “He didn’t make it.”

Dr. Matsumoto thumbed through the journal hesitantly and CSM continued, “I have, of course, made a translated copy which I have in safe keeping.”

“At what cost am I obtaining this information?” Dr. Matsumoto asked.

With another long drawn out drag, CSM delighted in the high that restrained his fury. “You will be contacted by me when you have what I need. For now, you will continue your work.”

*

A blue 325i swerved into Scully’s lane, cutting her off. She accelerated into the other lane, then changed back, slowing down in front of the BMW. Mulder, following behind, pulled his car into the left lane and boxed the guy in at Scully’s urging. They both slowed down, the driver becoming irate, until Scully finally switched back over to the left lane, leaving him to suck the fumes of an eighteen wheeler.  Scully picked up her cell phone almost before it rang. “That guy deserved that Mulder.”

“This isn’t NASCAR Scully and I’ve got to follow you for another eight hours back to D.C. Are you sure this isn’t some pent up frustration? You did just drive eight hours to find out I could have handled the case by myself which is what I told you before you left if you recall.”

“Would you really call that a case Mulder? There’s nothing supernatural about cow dung and roach infestations.”

Mulder ignored her not-so-witty comeback. “Watch that older lady coming up on your left. I don’t want her tailgating you and you wind up running her into a ditch…. Have you ever been to Hyannis?”

“Why?”

“I was thinking of a place we can stop at on the way home.”

“What's in Hyannis Mulder?” Scully asked watching him in her rearview mirror.

“You’ll see.”

*

Mulder wasted no time hopping onto the trampoline holding a basketball in one arm while coaxing his partner. “Come on Scully, just try it. It’ll be fun. Release all that road rage.”

“Why do I feel like this is going to end really badly?” Scully mused as she removed her shoes. Scully took an unsteady step onto the first trampoline, Mulder already about three trampolines away from her.

“Come out here with me Scully.”

She looked around and they were the only ones in the arena. The basketball nets towering over her. Hesitantly, she made a couple giant wobbily steps and lost her balance sending her to her knees against the all too forgiving black propylene canvas. Mulder distracted, tossed the basketball, pointing as the ball swooshed through the net. With a satisfied nod he bounced over and held out his hand. “Don’t fight it. Go with the momentum.”

Passing him a dirty look Scully took his hand and slowly stood, her legs trembling. She looked into his non-judgemental eyes and he waited for her to get her sea legs before he started to jump. She jumped with him, going higher with each leap and she started to giggle. He laughed with her laugh as he bounced with her bounce. “I told you this would be fun,” Mulder  boasted. Once he knew she had the hang out it he let go and bounced over to get the ball, jumping at each trampoline. He faked left and right against imaginary players, leaping as he did. On the last one he bent his knees and put his weight into it flying him through the air, sending him towards the net with a stretch of his arms he reached over the rim and made a satisfying dunk. Proud to show off in front of Scully he tossed her the ball.  She was able to get the basketball in the vicinity of the hoop, but she wasn't getting the height Mulder was. After a few more successful dunks of his own, Mulder returned to Scully who looked slightly more confident. “Face towards the net,” he ordered.

“What are you up to Mulder?” Scully asked cautiously.

“Just face the other way.” He gently placed his hands at her hips.  She tossed him a warning look, but there wasn't much behind it. Together, they started to jump. Each time they went higher until finally Mulder called out a warning countdown and just as she got into the air pushed her up just enough for her fingertips to reach the height of the rim and with both hands she sent it into the basket. It was a gratifying feeling and Scully let out a victory yell before coming down on the trampoline and on top of Mulder.  She didn’t apologize for the contact, the heat from his body inviting her not to pull away. His face, less than an inch from her own was filled with smugness. Scully was convinced he enjoyed watching her squirm. His arms were loosely around her, although she was more concerned about the condition of what was between his legs. When she looked up at him again his expression had softened and the small act went straight to her heart. Quickly, she gathered herself, ignoring the strength of their pull and returned to the standing position. Scully, feeling confident now, bounced without assistance in front of Mulder still sitting back on his hands causing the muscles of his arms to flex and bunch underneath his golden skin.

“I think you’re ready for a little one-on-one,” Mulder remarked flashing his eyebrows at her, his eyes sparkling like the crests of waves in sunlight sending her pulse into overdrive.

*

“You’re expecting results that are usually derived from multiple sessions of tests over years,” the doctor explained nervously to the smoking man. “Turning up the frequency could bring about rapid malignant cell growth, but it could also result in abnormal brain waves and trigger a reaction we have yet to measure. What you’re asking… Why would you need to bring about the cancer sooner?”

CSM put his cigarette in the ashtray only to light another. An hour back in the States and this was the incompetence he had to deal with. He felt a headache coming on. Pointing his tobacco stained finger at the doctor he ended the conversation. “As the director of these tests I’m not asking. I know the risks and I am not here to answer your questions. You only need to do as I instruct. Turn up the transmission frequency.”

*

After a grueling eight hour drive they finally arrived in DC. Both stopping for gas, Mulder walked out with a small styrofoam cooler filled with beer bottles and ice. “This is for the game,” he explained as if providing her with an education. “I was thinking we could watch it at your house.” Scully had never took the time to watch a basketball game before, but if it was as fun as the trampolines, she was ready.

*

“This is the best time to watch,” Mulder said sitting at the edge of Scully’s couch. “We’ve been playing, you still have the sensation of the ball in your hands, the feeling as it leaves you and it’s all net.” Mulder tossed back his beer and smiled proudly. Queequeg jumped onto the couch, catching him by surprise with a quick flick of his tongue leaving wet residue against Mulder’s ear. Mulder bore his teeth at the dog and Queequeg let out a whimper and jumped down off the couch, lifting his leg to unceremoniously pee on Mulder’s. “Hey,” Mulder cried and shooed Queequeg away retreating to the bathroom to clean the mess.

Twenty minutes into the game and even though the Knicks were winning Mulder was far less enthusiastic. It was becoming exhausting explaining all the rules to Scully, but he had asked for the attention. He continued his explanation of the point system, “...Because if a player only steps on the three-point line it counts for two points. You have to have at least one foot outside the three point line for it to be three points.”

“Well, that doesn’t make much sense. Not exactly a three-point line then is it?” Scully replied. Basketball had too many rules for her that she wasn’t interested in learning. She was content to watch the teams run from one side to another, but Mulder had different expectations, so she feigned enthusiasm for his sake.

“Okay, that guy just slid across the court, that has to be a foul.” Scully argued.

“No, it’s legal. It’s all about when the ball is released and the player’s pivot foot. You must dribble before lifting the foot. If you’re passing or shooting you can lift your foot, but the ball needs to leave your hands before the foot returns to the floor.”

“Mulder, this is too much to learn just to watch a game. So why could that guy slide without dribbling?”

“Because, you can if you’re trying to secure a loose ball. When his momentum stops he has to dribble before getting up... or pass, shoot, or call time-out.”

“Mulder, give me another beer. It’s going to take more than one to get me through this game.”

“Are you cooking something?” Mulder asked as he stuck his nose in the air.

“I’m baking, actually.”

“You made cake?” Mulder said it with a stunned look on his face. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember her ever cooking anything for him before.

“Did you make that for me?” Mulder asked sounding almost touched.

Scully didn’t know how to answer. The short answer was she was baking it because she sort of felt like brownies, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “Well, yeah.”

“Are you sure you won’t marry me?” Mulder joked flashing his stormy blue skies her way.

Scully put her hands on her hips ready to respond, but Mulder spoke first. “Would you hate me if I took it to go? I really have to get back to my apartment and I want to have this report written up for Monday morning.”

“No. Of course,” Scully stammered.  

It wasn’t until after the door shut and Scully headed back to the kitchen that she realized and voiced her disapproval to Queequeg, “Hey, he took the whole thing.”

Queequeg barked as if she was speaking directly to him and pawed at her leg as she scratched his head. Scully reached over to the cookie jar and gave him a treat. He laid at her feet, happily chomping away. At least one of them got to enjoy dessert.


	7. Ditching as an Artform

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first part of the chapter is quite absurd, but then, so was the episode "Syzygy". It had all the telltale signs of Carter. Twins, numbers, annoying girls that needed to die.. He once claimed this proved Mulder and Scully didn't belong together romantically because under the influence they hated each other. Others argued that if everyone was acting opposite of what they would normally do then if that were true they would have felt an intense attraction. I give this episode two fingers way up in the air.  
> Next we have "Grotesque" and Red from that 70's show. Dark, creepy, mostly everything I like in my x-files episode with the exception of Scully being tossed aside like this was an abduction case. Definitely one to watch late at night with the lights off.  
> This chapter doesn't further the story much, but it does show two sides of Mulder's ditching ways and another example of the distance they must overcome before the cancer arc takes hold and their true feelings are exposed like a corpse with a Y incision on Dana Scully's forensics table.

“Scully, you know you ran through another stop sign,” Mulder said giving her an infuriatingly annoying update on her driving.

“And I thought I told you to shut up,” Scully answered. She was ready to throw him out of the car. Her body itched, the air was stifling and right now even Mulder’s breathing was irritating her.

“How much longer are you going to be like this?”

“I don’t know, how much longer are you going to try to bully me?” Scully returned.

“I’m not… you know what..” Mulder put his finger up to say something, but then thought better of it and shook his head. “Nevermind.”

“As you can see, I was correct. We’re traveling in the right direction. If we followed you we’d be lost.”

They drove for another hour and as the gage lowered itself closer to the “E”, Scully pulled off the highway to fill up the tank. To her surprise, Mulder had already removed the cap and started to pump the gas before she even returned from the cashier. He squinted her way. “The effects should have worn off between the amount of time that has past and our distance from the epicenter..”

“So the astrologer predicted everything that happened?”

“She said the date combined with the alignment of the planets was the catalyst. Those girls were born on the same time on that date and it caused quite an internal imbalance. It heightened certain characteristics of everyone’s personality, which explains our short term antics.”

Mulder hung the nozzle back on the pump and closed the tank. He got in the car and Scully slowly pulled away as he secured his seat belt.

“If any of that were to be true, our reaction under the planetary influence proves we would probably be a nightmare as a couple,” Scully commented keeping her eyes fixated on the road, maintaining a safe speed.

“I’m not sure if it proves that at all,” Mulder returned cocking his head.

“If there was an attraction, it would have been heightened and we would have been all over each other,” Scully argued back.

Mulder bit the side of his cheek. “Not necessarily. It augmented certain aspects of ourselves, our personalities, but it appeared to be quite random. Under that logic, it would mean my true cravings lead me to alcoholism and you to chain smoking. That doesn’t seem very accurate.”

Scully picked at the threads on the car’s steering wheel. “I might owe you an apology for my behavior concerning you and Detective White, but professionally speaking, it is kind of humiliating when your partner ditches you for another woman and decides to pursue the case without you.”

“I did not…,” Mulder started to argue, then held up his hand. “Okay, I might have been slightly seduced by the circumstances, but not to the point where anything unprofessional occurred. I was perhaps out of line by my comments. While they may be petite, your legs could be considered attractive in a certain light.”

“Don’t hurt yourself with the compliments Mulder.” Scully said whipping her head his way. She sighed. “Maybe I was a little hasty, jumping to conclusions with you and the detective. I guess… in a certain light…. you could be a type of macho man…. ” Scully reached out her hand running it up and down his bicep. “Have you been working out?”

Mulder looked at her curiously, furrowing his brow. He pursed his lips, “You feeling okay?”

The look Scully gave him burned at his stomach. There was no mistaking it. The last time she looked at him like that she was under the spell of the Kindreds.

“Scully… I.. I…” Had she always been that attractive? What did he start to say? “I love that dark red lipstick you wear sometimes. The contrast with the blue in your eyes. Makes me forget I’m color blind.”

“Mulder, I know I’ve never told you this before, but you have an unbreakable inner strength.. That is so sexy.”

Mulder felt his groin tightening. “Scully, I think we’re still experiencing side effects.”

Scully raised an eyebrow. “What makes you say that Mulder?”

“The way you’re looking at me, like I’m a piece of raw meat. The way you’re touching and talking to me.” Mulder gulped, his hand wandering over to her leg, he slowed his speech as he spoke. “The insatiable urge I have to run my hands up and down those little legs and suck on your tiny toes.”

Scully glanced over at him again and it lit him on fire. “I’d rather you wrap those bean poles _you_ call legs around me and make good use of those huge fingers.”

Mulder’s heart stopped, his mouth went dry, and he was having trouble catching his breath. “I think we need to get a room… fast.”

By the time they reached the nearest motel, Scully’s hand had made itself comfortable with the inside of Mulder’s thigh. He had already removed her blazer and was kissing his way up her arm. His heart was pounding and it took pure will to peel himself away long enough to check-in and retrieve the keys. He handed Scully one and opened the door with the other pausing before he entered, taking a long inhale of her scent.

“Mulder, why are you smelling me again?” The question came out raw with the exception that her hands had a firm grip on his ass.

“I don’t know how I feel about your perfume, but your hair smells divine. Intoxicating. Maybe it’s your pheromones,” Mulder replied taking one last whiff.

“Mulder, there’s no scientific evidence that humans are affected by pheromones..” As she said it her hands shifted over to his abs, making their way up his chest starting to undo the buttons underneath his tie.

“Scully, go inside the room,” Mulder pleaded, his voice shaky and unsteady, her hands pulling at his resolve.

“What?”

“Go inside and lock the door and whatever you do, don’t come out until the morning.”

“But Mulder,” she said as she leaned into him, pressing her cheek into his chest.

Mulder groaned, the urge to kiss her overpowering, he gently pushed her off of him keeping a firm grip at her shoulders. “I’ll be right next door Scully, but I need you to hurry. Please, please, if only once, do what I’m asking you.”

Scully nodded as if she was drunk. “Okay.”

“Go inside and take a cold shower. I mean as cold as you can get it,” Mulder shouted as he closed his door. She could hear him engage the lock and the chain.

She did as he requested, but that only left her naked, thinking of him, rocking against her own hand as water dripped down her back. “Mulder,” she moaned, her voice echoing through the steam.

“Oh Scully,” his voice muffled painfully back from his own shower. “Whatever you do, do not leave your room,” he reminded her.

“Mulder,” she moaned again, one hand steading herself as the other tried its best to relieve the ache of an entire wall separating them.

“Scully,” he returned, her name heaven on his breath.

She could feel his hand burning through the shower tile to her own. She flexed and pressed harder against it. Her need for him was growing instead of subsiding. “This is crazy Mulder, I'm coming over.”

“Don't Scully. Please don't,” he begged. Scully could feel his heart bleeding through the grout. “You mean too much to me.”

His plea ate at her heart and sobered her. Calming her aching. They called each other’s names out another time, but it had lost its edge until finally the last of their desires swirled down the shower drain.

Scully woke to find herself naked on the cold floor of the motel shower and momentarily wondered if it all had been a bad dream.

Mulder, on the other hand, was already dressed and on the phone to the astrologer, but her news surprised him. “There should have been no side effects of the planetary alignment once they passed out of formation.”

Mulder thanked her, confused, and headed back to the car.

“Did you speak with the astrologer?”

“Uh, Yeah, she said everything should be normal.”

Scully nodded. “That’s a relief.”

“Yeah, everything should be back to normal.” Mulder repeated slowly, wrapping his fingers around the steering wheel and driving away.  

* Post Grotesque...

Two weeks later and it seemed like two years. That town meant to tear down their bond and instead they left unscathed. This new case, of gargoyles and demons, demonic possession, a man driven to madness by another’s insanity, had wedged its way in, sawing at their tether. Each picture screamed out as it was torn from the walls of Mulder’s apartment leaving him with unanswered ponderings. Was demonic spirit possession a mere contagion? Or had it laid dormant controlled only by consciousness like the digestive bacteria in one's stomach, waiting out the days until it can consume you whole?

Scully stood on the other side of Mulder’s door listening to the massacre. The knob twisted and she pushed her way into his dimly lit labyrinth. “Mulder?” she called out tentatively.

“Yeah,” was his response.

She stood behind him as he kneeled on his couch staring at the wall, clutching his artistic rendering of the monster that consumed his instructor.   

Her hand traced the air like she was trying to hold back and not touch him. Uncertain what corners his mind was presently occupying. The room was dark with the exception of the moonlight. Their bodies, elongated by the shadows, a reflection of a tainted mirror. Like a funhouse skewing perceptions veiled by their fears. “The devil found me Scully.”

Now she allowed her fingers to rest at his shoulder, her thumb pressing into his back, pushing away the tension. He collapsed into her as he rested back onto his heels, his eyes fixated on one picture.  

“How does such ugliness hide inside us?”

“You are not a monster Mulder,” Scully replied pragmatically. She moved her hand up his neck and towards his scalp, massaging the area he had working overtime the past nights. He closed his eyes and she could feel the soft tissue underneath his skull lighting up as her fingers passed over each part.

Mulder continued in his low monotone, “I believe anyone could become a monster if you let down your guard long enough. Then these pictures. They come to life.”

“The only evil I see here Mulder is when you shut down on me.”

Mulder turned his body, leaning on the back of the couch so his eyes could take hold of hers. “I won’t take the chance of you drowning inside the madness of the abyss Scully.”

Scully pulled away resting her hands on her hips. “Who are you protecting me from Mulder? The devil or yourself?”

“Maybe both,” he replied softly, slouching back into the shadow’s darkness.

Scully’s voice fell to almost a whisper and her hand rested once again at his shoulder. “When you hide from me Mulder, it only forces me to run faster towards you. I will always find you.”

He lifted his head, the moon reflecting brightly from his eyes. “Then by you, I was meant to be saved.”


	8. Two Saturdays and a Feline Horror Fantasy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These chapters cover, "Piper Maru", "Apocrypha", "Pusher", and "Teso Dos Bichos". Black oil rears its ugly head for the first time, but to me it was not as interesting as the coverup of Melissa's death. Skinner experiences his own character growth as he begins to see the strings and the curtain behind the faithful government. Pusher is a classic and from the mind of Vince Gilligan and he thought it was the best thing he would ever write. Mulder better enjoy Scully pampering him because it is not going to last. Teso Dos Bichos is so notoriously bad I could only depict it as a bad dream.

It was a sunny Saturday morning when Scully picked Mulder up from his apartment to drive to her mother’s house for reasons she had yet to fathom. Mulder understood, it was not like them to go visit her mother together, but this was a special day because, well, Mulder decided it was. When he got in the car he was reminded of Scully’s remarkable ability to look sexy in anything although he could have won an academy award pretending not to notice. Today she had on dark slacks with a casual blouse and her hair pulled back in such a way that only a few wisps dared to free themselves and caress her face. It was enough to make Mulder’s heart skip a beat if he paid attention. On that he pleaded the fifth. The whole way there Scully was attempting to pry the information out of him as to why they were visiting her mother and since when did the two of them have mutual interests that didn’t involve Scully, but Mulder was able to distract her with talks of pure liquid conscious aliens long enough to get them to the driveway.

When Scully opened the door to her mother’s house, Mulder was right behind her. As soon as she crossed the threshold she saw the onslaught of people and stopped dead in her tracks. “Mulder, what is this?”

“This,” he said guiding her by the elbow, “Is something your mother and I put together. We thought more needed to be done for Melissa than her funeral. Today we are honoring her in the best way we know how,” Mulder continued as her mother gave them both a big hug and they walked  through the house, past the lavender flowers and yellow centered white daisies, and all the other favorite flowers of Melissa’s towards the backyard. “If Melissa is still speaking to us Scully, it is only right that we should listen.”

Mulder delighted in the look of shock and awe on Scully’s face. He couldn’t help it. He also couldn’t help the momentary lapse in judgement when he considered one day seeing that expression while Scully was lying on her back… with him so graciously on top of course, but today wasn’t about his mischievous mind or selfish ponderings. Today was about Melissa and giving Scully something to smile about in all this tragedy. On the left side of the yard was a booth setup for readings, tarot, tea leaves, etc., center stage had a yoga class that was about to begin, then to the right was an acupuncture tent and a massage tent. Still another area for crystals and aura cleansing. Inside the house, the guest bedroom would be hosting a transcendental meditation, her mother’s bedroom had people participating in a crystal bowl sound healing meditation, while in the living room the drum circle was forming. Later in the evening there would be a seance and an area to discuss all the good times and memories of Melissa. Throughout the house and outside were pictures and posters of Melissa at different stages of her life from her mother’s collection and those of her friends.

“You and my mother did all this?” Mulder gently laid his hands at Scully’s shoulders and brought his mouth to her ear, “Do you like it?”

He could feel the goosebumps as they rose up her arm. “Mulder, I… I love it.”

Scully tilted her head upwards and the look that transpired made him know that all the effort put into the day was worth it. Scully ran her tongue across her bottom lip. “Melissa would have loved this as well. Every bit of it. This… this really is… her.” Scully’s eyes started to steam, but Mulder quickly swept them with his thumb. “Come,” he said shortly and took her hand leading her out into the yard. “There’s more.”

The yoga instructor smiled at Scully as they approached and Scully finally recognized her. She should have, she was one of Melissa’s closest friends. The instructor winked at Mulder and started her speech. Telling everyone what Melissa had meant to her and finally announcing that once a month they would hold an event in Melissa’s name. She continued adding “Once a year we will hold a fundraiser at Zenfinitea to all the victims of gun violence in honor of Melissa.”

Mulder glanced back at Scully who couldn’t wipe the tears away fast enough.

For a minute Mulder was uncertain if he had gone too far and suggested, “Why don’t we find Queequeg and go for a walk around the block Scully.”

She nodded and Mulder waited outside as she went to retrieve the dog. The second Mulder came into view Queequeg darted at him, growling and barking. “What is up with this dog?” Mulder asked growling back at him.

“Maybe he senses your detest.”

“I like dogs. Just not this one.”

Both Queequeg and Mulder settled down enough for Scully to get them moving down the sidewalk, Queequeg now happily sniffing along.  

“Mulder I can’t begin to express my gratitude.”

“Well before you tear up on me again, your mother really did a lot of the work. It took us a couple weeks, but Melissa had a lot of very generous friends and we’ve had quite a turnout.”

“I will never forget what you did today Mulder.”

She had him blushing, mostly from the way she was looking at him, which wasn’t easy to do. “Hey!” Mulder screamed as he sidestepped Queequeg merrily lifting his leg and letting a yellow stream fly. Mulder had missed the residual spray by a couple inches. “That was done on purpose,” Mulder said pointing at Scully. “If we ever do find Krycek we can always let this dog use him as a chew toy.”

Scully held back a giggle and ignored the theatrics. She didn’t want to talk about Krycek. “Did you happen to invite Skinner?”

Mulder nodded. “We did. He said he would stop by later. I think this has been an eye opener for Skinner. He told me he was only looking to bring guilty men to justice, but as professional and as much of a company man he may be, this was personal.”

They walked another half mile and Queequeg began doing his circle dance of elimination. Within a few steps he had left a brown package for Scully to scoop up in a little black bag. Queequeg barked and ran around in excitement tugging at his leash and Mulder let out an “ugh” as he held his nose and crinkled up his face. “I just don’t get what you see in that dog,” Mulder added.

Once the day’s activities were completed, Scully parked the car in front of Mulder’s apartment building to let him out and thank him again.”Mulder you added a layer of meaning to my sister’s death that I didn’t consider… I’ll never be able to repay you…” He was just happy to see her smiling again. “Oh, Scully I forgot. Today also comes with a gift for you.” He pulled out a VCR tape he was hiding underneath the seat. “Your mother and friends gave us the footage and Frohike helped with the editing and music. It’s really a copy of all the pictures and videos Melissa and her friend’s could find and I didn’t have a blank tape so I had to tape over one of the videos from my special collection so if there’s anything a little risque at the end of the tape, it’s not Melissa.”

Scully squinted at him curiously. He returned it with a smirk. Waving at him before driving off, she left him at the curb to savor in the smile he had plastered on her face. He loved when she played with him like that and he loved that he could make her heart feel full for her sister. He understood more than anyone what it was like to lose a sister.

*

In a dark commuter lot Scully was awakened by the poke of Mulder’s finger across her cheek. It startled her and she apologized, but the soft adoration in his eyes and cheeky grin told her he had enjoyed being her pillow, if not her drool cup. Unfortunately, their electric gaze was short-lived as they sprung into action, their trench’s flailing in the wind of their own speed as they raced to the ringing payphone and to a man known simply as Pusher.

“He put the whammy on him.”

“Please explain to me the scientific nature of the whammy.”

“What do you need me to say Mulder, that I believe that Modell is guilty of Murder? I do. I’m just looking for an explanation a little more mundane than the whammy.”

It was a Saturday night that found Mulder in Scully’s apartment sifting through case files. The invitation came from her. After the trial Modell had forced them to endure Scully had used their work as an excuse, but the truth was she wanted Mulder close to convince herself that he was indeed safe. The fear she had felt in the FBI van was still hiding inside her. Every case put them in mortal danger, but this one… something about it struck a different chord. In a flash her life without Mulder in it was before her eyes and that wasn’t anything she ever wished to be a part of.

“Do you want more iced tea Mulder? I could make us something to eat?”

“More tea would be great, but we can order in pizza or Chinese food, don’t go through the trouble of cooking anything.”

“It’s no trouble. Really,” Scully said as she headed for the kitchen. She needed to do something with her hands because her eyes wouldn’t stop staring at him.

Scully returned thirty minutes later with two plates of pasta and set them on her coffee table so they could work and talk. Inside the van surrounded by FBI she couldn’t display her emotions so she kept them close to her vest. They were no longer in that van, he was in her apartment innocently downing spaghetti prepared with her care.

“Scully…” Mulder started, but Scully reached for his hand, covering it with hers on top of the coffee table. She nodded and gave him the warmest smile she could muster tightening her hand around his like an embrace. He sent it back, his eyebrows lifting to reveal more of the glow of his eyes. She needed him to know how much she cared, how deep it went, and how she needed him to come out of the danger they encountered alive. They both swallowed hard simultaneously. “I know,” she managed to get out. The moment had taken her breath. “I know,” she repeated and swiped at her eyes with her finger not wanting the tears to spill over. Quickly she pulled away and retreated to the kitchen. She felt his footsteps behind her and the softness of his fingers pressing into her shoulder. Turning she hugged him and he wrapped his arms around her drowning his left hand in her scarlet locks. His lips soothed her forehead and she smiled at her absurd outpouring.

“The look on your face when I told Skinner I agreed with you was priceless,” Scully finally said trying to hide her emotions.

Mulder smiled meekly still not releasing her from his embrace. “I would have killed myself Scully if you didn’t come out of that alive.”

“And I’m not sure how alive I’d be if anything happened to you.”

With his finger he lifted her chin so their eyes locked. “I know… and I also know that a single tear from you is all that separates the world from divinity.”

*

“I had the worst nightmare,” Scully said placing her briefcase on the desk as she entered. Mulder set down the papers he had in his hands and drew in his chair. Whatever was at the other end of that sentence was going to be good.  

“We were attacked by cats,” Scully continued taking the seat adjacent to him.

“Laser cats?”

“No.”

“The musical cats?” Mulder’s eyes grew wide with fear.

“No.”

“Thundercats?”

“No,” Scully said impatiently, “this was like Muppet cats.”

“Was kermit or Miss Piggy in the dream?”

“No, but I think Gonzo was…” Scully shook her head and suppressed a smile, “No, that was you.”

Mulder stroked his nose. “Hey”

Scully ignored his outburst. “And Rizzo the rat, and all his friends. I had to bag them for evidence. Labeled Rizzo into evidence as a partial rat body part.”

“That was some dream.”

“That’s just the beginning. Then we find human entrails in a tree, I do an autopsy and discover the owner had been snacking on sunflower seeds.”

Mulder pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows “A man of taste.”

“Don’t do that you’re scaring me.”

“The entrails spoke to you?”

Scully laughed. “No, that’s what I’m saying because you said that in my dream. Anyway, one of the suspects was tripping on hallucinogens.”

“Ooo Scully, a psychedelic dream.”

“It may have been. I had these shadows cutting across my face like some 1940s detective noir with dark clothes and deep red lipstick.”

Mulder kept his lips pursed as he chewed his inside cheek and she could see the image coursing through his mind.

She kept to the story. “And we find rats in all the toilets and then the dog died.”

“You dreamt of a dead dog?”

“Yeah, the dog ate a cat that ate a rat that ate rat poison”

“Really bad Dr. Seuss?”

Scully sighed losing her patience. “You led us through the sewers, endless sewers, that had a lot of room in them.. there were dead bodies everywhere eaten by something…”

“Killer cats,” Mulder finished.

“Exactly.”

“They attacked us, scratched my face, they came from everywhere.”

“Attack killer cats.”

“Yes, hundreds of them, you were throwing them off of me. Then they were scratching, tearing through the wood..”

“What wood?”

“In the sewers.”

“Wait,” Mulder said holding up his hand for emphasis. “This sounds like a Freudian playground between the cats and wood.”  

Scully gave him a look that she wasn’t playing. “So these killer house cats..” Mulder said and picked up his pen playing with it in his hands.

“Yes! And you hoisted me up and we left them in the sewer. And the police had to come and the fire department to rid the place of..”

“Killer cats,” they said in unison and then Scully added, “but they were gone, they disappeared.”

“Just like that.”

Scully nodded. “The Native American artifacts went back to Ecuador and everything stopped and then you wrote up the case. You were reading it to me. Your voice, it was very soothing and monotone and then I woke up.”

“What like my sexy voice?” Mulder said as he chewed on the end of his pen.

“I don’t remember any sexy voice,” Scully said shaking her head tight lipped.

Mulder leaned his elbows on the desk, his chin in his hands. “Are you sure you didn’t take any of those hallucinogenic drugs?”


	9. The Mysterious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The following takes place within the episodes, "Hell Money", "Jose Chung's From Outer Space", "Avatar", and "Quagmire". If "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" is the sequel to "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" then "MASMTW" is definitely the sequel to "Quagmire" even including our stoner friends. Scully describes in "Quagmire" what she sees Mulder turning into and that depiction is in "MASMTW". We see Mulder like Ansel, in his hopes to capture a photograph of his monster and obtain his tangible proof. There's even the repeat of looking at blurry photographs and the camera turned the wrong way and as Scully predicts, "That man is your future. Listening only to himself. Hoping to catch a glimpse of the truth for who knows what reason." Of course, Mulder isn't as grim as Darin Morgan likes to paint him, driven to madness by his own obsessions. Mulder's got a lot more going on than the buffoon Darin sees, but it is fun to watch. Scully, in all Darin fables is smart, sexy, and the hero. She needs a promotion. Maybe we'll give her one. These episodes also line up with S3 and S4 - Mulder as a father figure. They can try to shove it down my throat, but I'm not biting.  
> This chapter is simple and is an intro for chapters to come.

A record breaking 19 foot 3 inch long human killing, dog eating alligator was being strapped to a flat truck, hunted down and caught by Fox freakin’ Mulder, yet all Mulder could think about was what a disappointment he was to Scully.  If he was her Ahab, what mystical romance could he offer if his great white whale was nothing more than a myth and the harpoon only injured her or the ones she loved? He had no right to ask her to stay when her life would surely be better without him. Scully was a woman of science and Mulder one of fantasy and delusions. Their chance meeting scripted by a cigarette smoking maniacal force haunting their very existence. If fate and malevolent forces were responsible for their alliance, could they conquer that overwhelming truth? Mulder liked to think of their union as one of choice not consequence, but that didn’t change the fact that they were on opposite sides of a swinging pendulum. Was it time for Scully to leave the x-files?

The spiral had started six weeks ago after returning from a case out in San Francisco’s Chinatown district. They had uncovered a deadly lottery where Chinese men bet their body parts for a chance at a better life, but it was not an x-file. Scully told him it had reminded her of a case on Law and Order. Mulder took that with a grain of salt until Skinner called Mulder into his office to suggest that Scully might be better suited for that sort of investigative work. 

“Mulder I’m not trying to split you two up and I definitely wouldn’t want to lose Scully from my team, but this is an opportunity for her advancement. The program being offered to her is a road to the director’s chair making real change, controlling the government, being the head of checks and balances rather than fighting it from a locked door in the basement.”

The last part stung. There was no need for insults. Mulder fired back, “If that’s the way you see it sir then maybe that’s why we haven’t been as successful as you may have hoped.”

“This isn’t about the work you’ve done Mulder, it’s about Scully’s life, her career. That’s why I’m speaking to you first.”

“You don’t want me to talk her out of it,” Mulder concluded.  

“Neither of us want to see her leave, but it’s been 2 1/2 years on this assignment. It’s time.”

Mulder massaged the back of the chair in front of him as a passing cloud darkened Skinner’s office. “It’s Scully’s decision. I won’t give my opinion and persuade her to stay if that’s your concern. She’s my friend and I want what’s best for her.”

“Exactly.” Skinner nodded his head and Mulder retreated. He knew this day would come, he just hadn’t expected it so soon and didn’t realize how attached he would grow to her. Mulder didn’t doubt what Skinner was saying as truth. For once, this wasn’t about the x-files. Scully was just that good.

Her appearance before the Senate Subcommittee last month, while borderline insolent and insubordinate, impressed the hell out of anyone who witnessed it. Scully was well-spoken, fact oriented, and fearless against any man or otherwise. That week she went from shunned to pedestal. Honors instead of abductions. What would she decide?

A couple hours after his conversation with Skinner, Mulder was graced by Scully’s presence back in the basement. Ostentatiously, Mulder stacked the completed files hoping to draw some attention to the amount of work they had completed together. “How did your meeting go with Skinner?” Mulder asked attempting to keep a cool exterior.

“He gave me a lot to think about.”

“Oh?” Mulder said walking behind her so he could return the files to their rightful home in the gray steel cabinet. 

“Yeah,” she said. That’s all he got. Not even a full yes. Then she moved on. “Jose Chung is coming by here tomorrow for my account of our latest case for his new book. You’re not at all interested in speaking with him?”

How did she dismiss such a life altering meeting so easily? Maybe it wasn’t as hard a decision as he thought. “No, I’m not interested,” Mulder said sharply. “If he writes it everyone will sound foolish. A story like that becomes so convoluted when you add in different people’s perception, perspectives, fleeting recollections, erased and altered memories. The truth becomes as subjective as each personal reality.”

Their debate continued, Scully inexplicably enamored by the author and his barrage of published literature. Behind her Mulder was still filing and re-filing the same folders, fuming inside his head. Trying to reconcile the conversation she must have had with Skinner. Scully had posed the question to him before. How far would she follow him? By her own admittance he was asking too much. It was not her battle.The mystery behind her sister’s death was solved. Her own abduction was not one Scully cared to revisit and would rather forget and move on. What was in it for Scully and what dangers would she face if she stayed? Why stay?

*

Two weeks later...

“If it wasn’t for Scully’s investigative work on the autopsy and analyzing of the crime scene, not to mention her help in trapping the perpetrator…” Mulder argued as he paced in Skinner’s office. Skinner may not have wanted to open up to Mulder about how he knew to be at that hotel or the details of his succubus, but Mulder wasn’t shy about spilling what was on his mind.

“You think I don’t know that Agent Mulder,” Skinner said stopping him mid pace. “You think it doesn’t weigh heavy on my mind, but she belongs in this program. They came after me twice because of the x-files, targeted my family.. How much more of that do you want for Scully? Do not let your personal feelings interfere. She has until May 10th to give an answer to the board and nothing has come across my desk indicating a decision has been made.”

Mulder bobbed his head in agreeance, then threw it back, shooting air from his lips attempting to deflate his temper. Skinner was right. He had to lay low on this one. Give her time to decide for herself. He had kept his mouth shut this long and she hadn’t reached out no matter how many hints he threw.

The next day… Early Saturday Morning..

Exhausted from insomnia, Mulder surveyed his apartment which resembled a tornado hitting a newsstand. He was perusing the country through articles, scouring it for that old black magic Frank Sinatra sang about, when Mulder stumbled upon a missing person’s case in Georgia concerning an employee for the U.S. Forestry. It just happened that he went missing near the same lake that contained the supposed Loch Ness Monster of the United States - Big Blue. With a few phone calls he uncovered that a boy scout troop leader also went missing several weeks ago. Big Blue sounded alive and hungry. Five minutes later he was excitedly calling Scully and five minutes after that he had a suitcase packed, airplane tickets purchased, and was headed to her apartment. Something in his gut told him that this trip would give her the push she needed to make her decision as to whether or not she was joining the FBI career pathways program and besides, they hadn’t been on a date on a Saturday night in a long time. 

Waiting in the car outside the apartment complex Mulder daydreamed- A picture of himself taken next to a sedated Big Blue on the cover of National Geographic and Time magazine. Perhaps the fold-out section of the WSJ.

His name forever engraved in the Guiness Book and Ripley’s Believe it or Not as the truth was known to the masses. Scully proudly adoring him, by his side with the scientific evidence of prehistoric serpent DNA. Or maybe it was dropped here by a meteor that landed in the lake, slowly growing an alien being. The record in Mulder’s head scratched bringing his thoughts to a halt as his eyes laid upon Queequeg happily waddling about, stopping to urinate on a nearby bush with Scully connected to him by a retract-a-leash. Mulder waited while Queequeg circled and squatted. Sure, she complained about putting up with  _ his _ shit, but she gladly picked up Queequeg’s with a smile. Queequeg was a stupid name for a dog anyway he thought to himself. He looked like one of those hand warmers older women wore walking down 5th avenue in the winter. Could a creature that absurd even be considered a dog? Scully bent down, allowing her hands to play in his fur and scratch him as he licked her chin and frantically wagged his tail. “Unreal,” Mulder said to himself in disbelief of Scully’s pampering of this human flesh eating animal. Even worse he was forced to sit and wait until she finished.

Mulder sneered as she picked the dog up and placed him in the car. “He’s coming with us?” Mulder asked not hiding his disgust.

“Yes. Now let’s go, we’re going to be late for our flight,” Scully responded buckling herself into the passenger’s seat. 

Mulder wasn’t able to hold Scully’s attention between Queequeg taking the spotlight and Big Blue center stage. The case and the weekend, instead of bringing them together brought front and center what separated them - ideals, dreams, and approaches to life. They did manage a great conversation on a rock that he would add to the mental album of memories he cherished, but in the end, he had no tangible proof to convince himself that he should ask her to stay with him. 

During the airplane ride from Georgia back to D.C., Mulder’s depression didn’t subside regardless of Scully’s incessant consoling. She really did care about him and as crazy as his ideas were, or how much she doubted them, she time and time again used every tool in her arsenal to help give validity to his theories. It wasn’t until the car ride home and her last ditch effort to bring his spirits up that he finally told her what was really weighing on his mind.

“The basic body of an alligator is over 180 million years old. That does qualify it as a living dinosaur Mulder.” 

Mulder shifted the car into park in front of her building. “Take a walk with me Scully.”

Mulder came around to her side of the car and opened the door. She got out obediently, but not without a look of confusion. “You’re going to walk me inside?”

“No, around the block,” Mulder corrected. “The clouds have finally cleared and it’s time I cleared my mind.” 

Scully stayed in stride with him as he placed his hands in the pockets of his khaki jacket and headed down the well lit street. He took his time, missing the lines in each block of cement and watched as Scully inadvertently did the same. “You were right Scully,” Mulder said, his brows closing in on his eyes, an almost pained expression covering his face, “It doesn’t make a difference if it is the truth or a white whale. Both obsessions  _ are _ impossible to capture, and trying to do so  _ will _ only leave you dead, along with everyone else you bring with you.” Mulder stopped walking and faced Scully. “That’s why I’m begging you Scully to please take that promotion they’re offering you. Stay the course, run the Bureau, make a difference.”

Scully scowled, squinting one eye and raising the other eyebrow and eyed Mulder with such a force he felt the fear of God slide up his spine. 

“Mulder, when I said those words my dog had just died, my ship had sunk, I was cold, wet, and sitting on a rock in the middle of a lake facing a frigid Georgia night.” Scully retracted the missiles she was preparing to fire and stared down at her feet, then back up at him. Her gentleness that he often craved had returned along with a blue flame that warmed his own hazels and hugged his heart. “I will answer both of your questions Mulder with quotes from a man whose views I respect. You said, or rather I said, the truth is impossible to capture but -The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility…” Mulder recited along with her, “The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”

“Einstein?” Mulder smiled and slowly shook his head, “So, in that context the truth, while it may not be solely possessed, it can be understood. Which does give some validity to my reasons for seeking it, but what relevance is that in respect to you leaving the basement?”

“That I leave to my second Einstein quote of the evening- The most beautiful thing we can experience is the **mysterious**. It is the source of all art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.”  Scully took Mulder’s hand with calm and grace. “How much more mysterious can you get than the x-files Mulder? Without the mysterious, without this experience... If this was no longer my life, if I wasn’t here to experience it with you, I am as good as dead anyway according to Einstein.” She gave his hand a squeeze. “I’m turning down the offer and staying where I am Mulder, spending everyday rapt in awe.” She looked up at him again, bathing in his smile. Then she asked timidly, “Would you mind if I held your arm?”

“Not at all,” Mulder answered, happiness tugging at the corners of his mouth. 

“Einstein would be jealous of me,” Scully said as she grasped his elbow, “For you are the mysterious in its purest form.”

He put his hand over hers. “Well, my partner is the enigmatic Dana Scully,” he said. Then he walked her to her door and said goodnight.


	10. Living in the Moment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We're covering a lot of ground this chapter and the following episodes: "Wetwired", "Talitha Cumi/Herrenvolk","Home","Teliko", "Unrue", and "The Field Where I Died".  
> When Scully wants to prove something she opens up her lab and her book of science. When that doesn't provide enough answers she toys in Mulder's sandbox. Here we find her on a mission to prove Mulder's past lives in TFWID as invalid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, this is the cut scene from TFWID:
> 
> Mulder and Scully’s car barrel at TOP SPEED toward the compound. Mulder’s expression is intense as he races toward the compound. Scully is intense. Something catches her attention O.S.  
> SCULLY’S POV – ROAD SIGN  
> As it quickly streaks past FRAME, a large wooden road sign indicates “KAVANAUGH Road”  
> Scully considers, looks about, seeing, O.S. …  
> SCULLY’S POV – ANOTHER SIGN  
> “Temple of the Seven Starts/ SULLIVAN Field – 1 mile.”  
> WIDER  
> Scully considers, turns to Mulder, shouting above the car’s ROAR.  
> SCULLY: Mulder, this road is called “Kavanaugh”. The field is marked Sullivan Field.  
> Mulder continues to drive, not hearing her.  
> SCULLY (cont’d): They’re obviously named after those people. You subconsciously processed the names. that’s how you “knew” of their past existence.  
> Like he cares. As Mulder PUNCHES the engine…

Mulder’s eyes stung as the flash from the CSI’s camera caught the corner of his eye. Two feet protruded from the end of a tightly rolled rug. He caught a glimpse of Scully who he knew by her expression was contemplating their next meal. 

She met his gaze. “Mexican?” he offered. “Or Chinese.”

They both nodded at one another and said, “Burritos,” in unison, their combined voice a little louder than intended drawing some attention from the investigators, but the dead man did resemble a burrito and it was Tuesday after all.

“I know the killer of those two men behind the brainwashing in Braddock Heights, and the reason why we don’t need to investigate this case any further,” Mulder said as they walked to the cement picnic tables, handing Scully her burrito as he unwrapped his own.

“Who?” Scully asked sliding onto the bench, carefully peeling the top two inches of the paper so she could take a bite.

Mulder sunk his teeth into his own. It was as good as he remembered. “It was X,” he said answering her question. “And so was our human burrito. He’s covering more tracks.”

“But why?”

Mulder tried not to smile at how cute she looked trying to get her mouth around all seven layers. “Following orders.”

“Whose orders?”

“I don’t know, but 10 to 1 he smokes Morleys,” Mulder replied. “How are you feeling? Have you experienced any more side effects from your close encounter of the subliminal kind?”

Scully smiled shyly. “Other than still feeling ashamed to have ever had the capacity to think you’d betray me?”

“You’re thinking too much into it. It’s a far scarier fact that they are continuing to experiment on a unknowing population.”

Scully eyed Mulder’s packet of sour cream and he handed it over to her before she had to ask. There were many aspects to their unspoken relationship, but one that would always hold true, when eating Mexican, Scully was getting the sour cream.

“Besides,” Mulder said after another bite, “this time I have proof.”

“That device,” Scully said as she cleaned off her chin. “Why did you lie to Skinner?”

Mulder lifted an eyebrow. “What makes you think I lied to him?”

“You know who killed those men. You knew it was X.”

Mulder leaned in and lowered his voice. “I don’t know who he is and that’s what I told Skinner. Revealing an unknown man only puts all our lives in danger. The real goal is to stop who he works for. Without X we wouldn’t have these leads and we wouldn’t be this close to the truth. I need to protect that.”

Scully folded her arms at her abdomen and Mulder’s eyes diverted as it had inadvertently caused her chest to swell. “Sounds like a defense for the Nuremberg trials Mulder.”

“Is the guilty the man who executes or the man who orchestrates?” Mulder said entertaining her thought.

“Why continue if he wants you to find the truth Mulder? Why not expose everything himself?”

“You can’t leave that life Scully. They would find him before he reached a courtroom. I’m his voice.”

Scully took in a deep breath and waited for the wind to stop playing with the trees. “What about our burrito man? The Canadian farmer/scientist/horticulturalist that was experimenting with a method of growing some kind of hybridized seeds. How is that related to subliminal mind control?”

Mulder took her empty wrapper and empty cup, joining it with his own he got up and tossed them in the nearby trashcan waiting for her to rise. “I don’t know, but somewhere there is a connection and we’re going to find it.”

 

Talitha Cumi/Herrenvolk

 

As he stood by her bedside, both their hair now white as snowy fields from years of facing headstrong winds, he held her hand in his and allowed himself a short moment to dream of what could have been. The two of them with their son. Finally understanding what it meant to have a family he couldn’t walk away from.  If anyone ever knew the love he had for her. If his wife had ever known. Or Bill. So hell bent on fighting, resisting, Bill never spent the time on the real valuable. Holding her hand, she melted away all other desires. Even cigarettes became an afterthought. With all the power his position bestowed, she would recover. Their blue eyes would look into each other’s again. That he would make certain. He quickly let go of her hand and the fantasy as the door slowly opened with news of a traitor among them.

*

Even before the elevator doors opened, Mulder, whose mind was still on his mother, sensed something odd. Then he heard it. A scream and a few choice words. The doors screeched its need for some WD40 and revealed a trail of blood already muddied by a man laying down, writhing in pain with his hand at his back. The apartment door closest to the elevator was ajar and a woman whose mouth was covered by her hands looked at him in fright. Mulder ignored the woman, stepped over the man on the floor and followed the trail of red that led to his apartment. He recognized the dark trench coat first. Bile rose to his throat as X’s face came into view.  Mulder winced. Crouching over his lifeless body, with two fingers Mulder checked his pulse before calling it in. After committing to memory the letters SSGA scribbled in X’s lifeforce on his floorboards, Mulder quickly smudged it with his foot and called Scully.

One month later...

Mulder sullenly entered his apartment to find Scully anticipating his arrival. The folder filled with photographs slid from his hand to hers and as she perused the contents he explained in shock, “Sh--she gave me these pictures Scully. The proof. My sister --- her clones. They used my sister’s DNA to create -- what -- slaves?”

Scully stared in disbelief. Fear permeating her system. What monstrous creatures had they created? And Canada of all places. Her instincts made her want to plant doubt on what she saw, but Mulder’s expression told her his mind wasn’t up to hearing her cast out anymore possibilities. “Controlling the fears of a population, creating drone workers, cataloging the current population… I just don’t know Mulder. There are pieces missing.” Scully placed the folder down on his coffee table and sat besides Mulder on the couch. “X was our key and now we’re alone again Scully.”

Scully turned her head to gaze into Mulder’s half moons. “So, who is this “she” giving you pictures?”  

* Post Home*

“My work demands I live in a big city, but if I had to settle down, build a home, it’d be a place like this.”

 

Mulder sat back as the situation unfolded. Scully walked in like a woman who spent her life kicking ass and as far as he was concerned, she had.

Shortly after returning from Home, Pennsylvania it had been discovered that there was a silent investigation into Mulder’s recent abilities to supply substantiating proof for his cases. All of it adding up to the dismissal of all evidence pertaining to the Social Security Administration or the smallpox vaccinations. Scully had interrupted a small hearing on the subject like a fiery tornado tearing through an unsuspecting town.

Mulder, distracted and in awe of his partner understood that after their conversation on the bench in front of the Sheriff’s station he would never see her the same way again. He had always viewed her as a partner, perhaps in a sexless way, and a woman, in a fairly sexy way- sometimes too much so -- but as a bearer and caregiver of children had never crossed his mind. Selfishly he always believed he would be the object of her caregiving, but one day she may choose to devote part of herself to a family. It made Mulder’s insides weak. After his upbringing, he had no desire for a family or to raise a child. What kind of father would he be? Not much better than his own. So that meant Scully would have to leave him in search of another. His insides burned uneasily at the notion. For a minute he was sure he would be sick right on the conference room table.

“Mulder, do you concur with Scully’s findings?” Skinner waited impatiently for an answer. The panel glaring back at him unforgivingly.

“Absolutely,” Mulder replied smiling at Scully reassuringly as she looked back exasperated.    

*Post Teliko*

“My conviction remains intact that the mechanism by which Aboah killed, and in turn survived, can only be explained by medical science, and that science will eventually discover his place in the broader context of evolution. But what science may never be able to explain is our ineffable fear of the alien among us. A fear which often drives us not to search for understanding but to deceive, inveigle, and obfuscate. To obscure the truth not only from others, but from ourselves.”  

Mulder stared at the computer screen in utter disbelief. Scully had copied him in on the report she sent to Skinner so she knew he was going to read it. To him it reeked of anger and was a direct criticism of him to the point of using the actual word alien. Only he was clueless as to the root of the animosity.

Scully walked in and set her stuff in the back, brushing off her skirt on the way back, freeing it from miscellaneous debris that had accumulated during her commute.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” Mulder asked not waiting for her to get settled. He turned the computer screen so she had a clear view of her email.

Scully took a deep breath and it gave the appearance that she was taller than she was and preparing for battle.

“Mulder, who was assigned to this case, you or me?” She responded, her eyes daring him to go down the path.

“I don’t understand the question Scully, we’re a team.” Mulder flipped his heels onto his desk and his hands behind his head as if he wasn’t phased in the least by the steam rising from her surface.

“I’m the one that was called into the office at 5 o’clock in the morning. I was the one asked for my expertise - as a scientist and an investigator.” Scully’s voice picked up momentum as the words spewed from her lips and as they did Mulder’s demeanor became more and more relaxed. He was goading her, but at the same time he was angry and fighting the passive aggressive fight he knew best.

“But it was an x-file,” Mulder argued back in an even low cadence.

Scully pointed her thin manicured finger at him. “Not when it was assigned. Then you walk in like every other time I get assigned a case you might have an interest in.” Scully moved her hands over to her hips and lowered her voice. “You’re not my superior Mulder.”

Mulder held up his hands in a sort of defeat. “I never said I was.”

“And another thing,” Scully continued, “where did you disappear to? I asked you a direct question as to your whereabouts and you averted your answer.”

“I went to NY to meet my contact at the United Nations.”

“Does this contact happen to be the woman from the SSGA?”

Mulder reached across his desk and fidgeted with the pencils in the holder. He didn’t like where this line of questioning was headed. “Yes, but I don’t see how that has anything to do with it.”

“Whenever there’s a female involved you get mysteriously allusive,” Scully said crossing her arms and massaging her biceps as if comforting herself.

“Well, I know how you get.”

Scully’s head whipped around to stare him down. “How’s that Mulder?”

“If I’m being honest…”

Scully lifted her arms. “Well, by all means start with honesty.”

Mulder stood up from his chair to go toe to toe. “You know Scully, I think you are still being affected by that television transmission.”

“You’re not my boss Mulder and you had no right undermining me on _my_ case.”

“Last I checked the X-files were _my_ life’s work. Without my involvement you never would have found the answers not found in science.”

Scully got as close to him as she could considering their height differential. “There are no answers that can’t be found using science.”

Mulder leaned in tilting his head as if to kiss her. He didn’t want to fight and the close proximity of their bodies always worked to calm Scully when she was upset. “We’re going to have to agree to disagree because no one is winning this argument,” he said in perfect monotone.

It must have worked because he saw the muscles in her neck relax, there was a decrease in the rise and fall of her chest, and her arms fell to land at her sides. He could feel the heat rise in his own chest as she spoke. “I don’t want to win Mulder or be right, but I’m not compromising my beliefs.”

Mulder’s heart flew into his throat. “It’s fine Scully. Next case you do your thing and I’ll do mine.”

*Post Unrue*

“You missed my birthday Scully,” Mulder stated as he poured both of them some steaming coffee from the glass carafe.  

“I think I still have you beat when it comes to giving out birthday wishes Mulder.” Scully crossed her legs underneath the desk adjacent to the door and started typing as Mulder set down the styrofoam cup.

Mulder took a sip of his own coffee and stayed hovering almost spying on her computer screen. She tilted it his way to let him know he was free to peruse at his leisure. “Are they making you go through another round of therapy because you were held against your will?” he asked delicately.

“They saw no issues with my psych exams and I’ve completed my session with the in-house therapist.”

“I read the copy of your report. You know my experiences. I’ve allowed evil to venture into the darkest realms of my own mind with only hope that I returned unscathed. If you ever want to talk…”

“I’m fine Mulder..” Scully said staring him down.

“It’s something we share and I can listen if you need….”

“I’m fine. The therapist said I was fine.”

“I..I know I…” his voice trailed off. The subject was closed.

Mulder wandered over to his desk and started opening the pile of mail that was probably over a month old. “Do you want to continue this divide and conquer methodology to our cases?”

“For now.”

“Agent Pendrell asked about you again,” Mulder stated continuing to busy himself at his desk. “I sort of implied you might have went on a date and the man turned white as a ghost.”

“Why do you insist on torturing him Mulder. He’s just a kid.”

“Nothing wrong with a younger man Scully.”

“Mulder, I’m not going out with him just for your amusement.”

“It’s okay. I’ll let him borrow you for a night as long as he brings you back at a reasonable hour.” Scully stopped typing at her laptop and gave him a look that made every hair on his body stand on end. “I’m kidding, I’m kidding. Scully, have I ever told you how good you look in those dark suits?”

 

One month post The Field Where I Died - Dec. 1996

 

“Soul attachment is a very real thing,” Dr. Leonard Willis said as he crossed his legs and leaned back on his swivel leather chair. Mulder and Scully sat on the other side of his large cherry desk and exchanged expressions.  

“Soul attachment occurs when the soul of a person that has died finds its way inside the body of another living person.”

Mulder’s agitation grew with each strike of the second hand of the antique clock perched on the doctor’s overpriced desk. None of this made sense coming from Scully. He raised his eyebrows Scully’s way. “And you’re buying into this?”

“Many scientific books and articles have been written on the phenomenon,” The doctor interrupted.

“There may be a basis in science..” Scully said defensively.

Mulder cast Scully a doubtful look. Even if you considered it science, it was more fringe than anything she would follow on a normal day.

The doctor continued, “Discarnate souls “move in” when a person’s body or mind are weak. The crutch entity “fills a hole” so to speak, and in some ways support the original soul’s body. Like if you experienced a loss of a family member or had something devastating happen to your health or career.”

Or discovered they had cloned your sister to create mute drones to grow corn so bees can carry a virus to destroy all humans but the chosen few Scully thought to herself. “Scientifically they have been able to measure presence by monitoring glandular activity,” Scully clarified to Mulder.

“Whenever the body is out of balance, it is far easier for certain entities to attach themselves to that body. That’s why it’s important to take care of your body, keep it well fed, rested, hydrated, and relaxed.” The doctor paused seemingly to read the room, but Mulder was having a hard time reading the room himself. Usually a case ended and they moved on. This wasn’t like Scully to continue along a path once the case was over or to try so hard to convince him of a theory he never thought she’d go along with. Still he listened.

“Confusion with the original soul and the attached can arise as the host begins to identify as the attached. For example, you may find yourself attracted to people and have relationships with people you formerly wouldn’t. That is why we have found some victims joining cults and no one can talk the person out of it, even though the person was formerly very rational. Others have been diagnosed with multiple personality disorders. You may find friction with those you are close to..”

“So what’s the cure?” Mulder interrupted.

“Sometimes it’s something as simple as going on a nutritional balancing program to improve adrenal activity. Others have had success with fasting, psychotherapy, hypnosis, acupuncture,”

“I hear the catholic church is running a special on pea soup,” Mulder added and smiled at Scully.  

Another thirty minutes past before Mulder was able to relieve himself of the doctor and his full bladder. As he bounced down the cement steps towards the car, Mulder sheltering Scully with his umbrella on such a drizzly day, he posed his question,

“So what is your theory? That Sullivan and Sarah’s tormented souls inhabited the bodies of me and Melissa? That they are each other’s soulmates and Melissa and I are strangers? You really believe her multiple personalities are actually souls possessing her body like she’s some kind of repository?”

Scully stopped walking and faced Mulder keeping a close distance so neither of them got hit with the rain that was now falling in increasingly bigger drops. “If we’re all linked souls that travel together waiting in some purgatory until we are all ready to travel again, how come I have no recollection of her or any of the others?”

“Maybe because you’re not open to the possibility.”

“Why? Because I’m less spiritual than you? I’m not sure you’d win that argument,” Scully said as she touched her cross.

Back at the office the two of them went about their day silently. Eventually Scully made an excuse and went off to her office in the bullpen. The tension was exhausting to Mulder and when she returned he confronted her again.

“So you don’t believe in the possibility that Melissa could be my soulmate?”

Scully stopped rifling through the papers in the file cabinet and looked him in the eye. “No, no I don’t.”

Mulder slowly took a step closer like he was approaching a wild animal. “But you’re willing to believe in the possibility of a soul inhabiting Melissa and another inhabiting me and both of those being soulmates.”

“I know what it sounds like Mulder, but I believe that there are some well respected scientists that study this type of field and its treatment. As a Catholic it is not out of the realm of possibility.”

“Why? Out of all the times I’ve needed you to take a leap with me and consider the paranormal. Why now? Why this?”

“Because I refuse to believe that we are bound by eternity to the Cigarette Smoking Man or to imply I am here with you in this basement for any other reason than choice.” Scully fixed her hair behind her ear to calm down. “Besides, The Smoking Man was already alive in the forties where your hypnosis claims he was part of the Gestapo.”

Mulder still couldn’t grasp where the anger was from. “Maybe I got confused, but what about the photographs?”

“We see what we want to see Mulder. We could find similarities with any two people. I’m not going to argue with you about theoretical beliefs. If that’s what you decide to go through life believing…”

Mulder was losing his patience. What wasn’t she telling him. “Tell me, what makes you not believe?”

Scully held up her hands either in defeat or to put an invisible wall between them. Either way it worked. She turned and left and Mulder felt as if his heart had fallen into the pit of his stomach. He put his head down and walked out the door to head for the car and barreled right into Skinner who was walking into Mulder’s office for their 4PM meeting.

Mulder apologized gruffly and Skinner motioned with his thumb as if hailing a cab. “What did you do to Agent Scully?”

Mulder shrugged, “I don’t know. She’s still hung up on her last case. Why does it matter so much to her whether or not that woman is my soulmate? Either way the woman is dead.”

Skinner smiled and rocked his head back and forth. “Mulder, through three years of working with her you don’t know?”

“Know what?” Mulder said becoming defensive at the thought that anyone could have insight into Scully that he didn’t.

“Because Scully doesn’t share you Mulder. Not with anyone. Not in this lifetime or any other.”

*

That night, as with most lately, Mulder had trouble falling asleep. The time on his clock read 11:21 and he was sure Scully was asleep, but it couldn’t wait until morning.

Scully picked up the phone slightly groggy. Mulder answered her hello with, “I’ve been thinking Scully…. and... I guess I could understand your theory... It’s not that implausible to think I could possibly be susceptible to being inhabited by a soul whose soulmate is involved with the medical.. Or that the man’s soulmate might be the kind of woman that would fight until the end to prove he was correct in his beliefs and fighting the right side of the war.”

There was silence on the other end and for a minute he thought she might have hung up on him. Then he heard her breathing. Finally she spoke. “Mulder, do you know what time it is? I’ve been asleep for over two hours.”

Mulder chuckled. So Scully. “Yeah, I know.”

“We need to get some rest Mulder. That’s all it is. We’ve been up at two in the morning on every case we’ve had for over a month.”

Mulder felt slightly shut down, but he nodded into the phone. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“And Mulder,” Scully added, “You need to listen to me because, remember, I am your father.”

Mulder smiled. “Good night Scully.”  He hung up the phone and rested his hands behind his head as he stared up at the faded white of his living room ceiling. One last thought grazed through his mind as he drifted off - What if they continued to be reincarnated not because they kept missing each other in each lifetime, but because they didn’t make the right choices? What if the evolution of his soul with each passing life had more to do with Scully than he realized? What if only now he was on the right path? What if all the other choices were wrong?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you catch in Unrue, him pointing to where her cancer is?  
> This is only the second time I've watched TFWID and I don't plan on watching it again. For me, the episode was boring and had some serious holes in it.  
> For example, CSM was already alive during WWII. In 1953 he was already working for the U.S. government.  
> Sidney thought Truman was president which means he was alive when Melissa was supposed to be Mulder's husband during the Holocaust. I could look even further, but why bother? The Truth we all know.  
> Skinner was the only redeeming part of the episode.


	11. Ray of Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter covers "Sanguinarium", "Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man", "Tunguska", "Terma",   
> "Paper Hearts", and "El Mundo Gira". Most of this story and the episodes it covers Mulder and Scully have had their differences at the forefront. In the end their respect and love for each other always win out. The remainder of Season 4 and Season 5 continue in my story "Falling".

“Cannibalism, witchcraft, how many more cases will we encounter of people driven by their desire to maintain their youth, altering their appearance in the name of vanity?” Scully asked as she waited for the light to turn green so they could get on the highway.

“Do I look old to you Scully?” Mulder asked completely ignoring her question.  Sometimes she wondered if the two of them were even on the same planet.

“Mulder.”

“Seriously.”

Scully gave him a quick look and brought her eyes back to the road. “You don’t look older than your age.”

Mulder turned his body towards the window, his elbow leaning against the car door. “Forget it.”

“What?”

Mulder flipped down the visor and examined himself in the mirror, running his index finger down the bridge of his nose. “What would you think if I fixed my nose?”

“I’d hate it.” Scully said squeezing the steering wheel.

“Why?”

“Because it wouldn’t be you Mulder. While I believe it’s a personal matter and I don’t pass judgement, my personal opinion is the best part of someone is their differences. That’s your character. Anyone can go through life with a perfectly symmetrical face.”

“What are you saying Scully?”

They passed a sign for a haunted corn maze with a jack o’lantern perched on top. Scully grinned and tossed up her eyebrows at Mulder. “Happy Halloween?” 

*

*Post Tunguska/Terma*

“What did you get for Halloween charlie brown?”

“It feels good to put my arms around you, both of them”

“Agent Scully smoked out Vassily Peskow. Something none of your men or mine were capable of. Now do you understand why I saved her life?” The Smoking Man asked the Well-Manicured Man as he let a caterpillar of ash fall to the ground only to start creating another one. 

The Well-Manicured Man looked at him in disgust. “I know her value to the project. I knew it when you sent your thugs to kill her and executed her sister instead. But now, to accelerate the growth of her cancer, to what means?”

“Because Mulder must be on our side and with the cure will come allegiance.” CSM took another long drag. “I will spare her life. We will need her again after all.”

*

In her white lab coat and a stethoscope Scully was doing what she did best - keeping Mulder alive and healthy. Concerned over Mulder’s exposure to the black cancer she performed a multitude of tests, all of which Mulder begrudgingly conceded to.   

“Scully, how many times are you going to take my blood pressure?” Mulder asked as she wrapped the cuff around his arm and pressed the stethoscope against his brachial artery.  He adored watching her work, the concentration and care, the way she doted on him. 

Scully lifted an eyebrow. “Would  you rather I prick you again?”

Mulder sifted through his mental file, but held his clever comebacks to himself. “Did you get the lab results back?”

“Yes,” Scully said ripping off the cuff. “Your white cell count is high, but not enough to be concerned. About equivalent to if you were fighting a cold.”

“My body knows there’s something foreign inside it.”

“Possibly.  Your results also indicate an increase in glandular activity and your brain is busy, but for you that is most likely normal,” Scully said carefully watching him button up his shirt. “Are you experiencing anything out of the ordinary?”

“The test was painful and I felt sick afterward, but now I feel fine. Like it never happened.”

“Well, all your tests indicate that you are very healthy and I haven’t seen any changes. I even ran your DNA at your request and I don’t see anything that leads to you morphing into an alien hybrid,” Scully commented jokingly.

Mulder hopped off the exam table and invaded Scully’s personal space.  In a monotone voice he made the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. “If what was in that rock is inside me, then there’s an alien, a martian possibly, living inside me Scully.”  

Scully averted his gaze. “All we can do for now is keep an eye on a series of indicators and see if anything changes. Mulder, all the others that we’ve seen that were infected either fell into a coma state, died, or were kept alive by some sort of treatment. None of that happened to you. You might have some kind of immunity or at least act as a carrier that can keep it in a dormant state. There’s a chance your body attacked it and it died. Possibly left your body already.”

“What if it didn’t?”

“Then that’s a little spooky,” Scully replied stone faced.

“Very funny,” Mulder said and then got very quiet. “Scully, when that black oil was moving through my veins.. I thought about you facing congress…”

Scully looked back up into his hazel eyes and felt the world melt away. “I know Mulder. I had a moment when I was sitting in my jail cell reading through scientific journals and I thought of what you might be going through out there alone..”

Mulder touched Scully’s arm to say goodbye and an electric pulse surged through him almost knocking him off balance.  It warmed his heart and radiated inside his body. A strange sensation, as if her compassion had morphed into a physical object that had crawled inside him. He shook it off and left for the office. As he entered the elevator he thought, you went to jail for me and he heard in his head Scully’s voice, _Not just you.. They were trying to bury The Truth.. So I trusted in your judgement even when mine would have inclined me to take a different route_.

*

Paper Hearts

A dream is an answer to a question we haven’t learned how to ask

Driving to Norristown Pennsylvania, Scully got an uneasy feeling in her stomach. The kind you get when you feel unprepared for an exam or know you have to do something important, but can’t remember exactly what it is. Scully’s intuition screamed like a howling wind through a dark deserted cemetery. Fears, that one day Mulder’s search for the truth about Samantha would drive him over the edge. She tried her best to explain his Alice in Wonderland dream away, but she knew. Knew like you know what it feels like to get a cavity filled from a dentist before you ever get to the chair. Somehow, Mulder would connect this case to his sister’s abduction. 

Mulder, unable to resist the call of the truth about his sister, took Roche on a field trip while Scully met Skinner’s wrath. “You let me down,” Skinner barked at Scully. A weaker person would have had to fight back tears, but Scully was distracted by the feeling that she had let Mulder down and defending him to Skinner didn’t help matters.

Mulder killed Roche, but it didn’t stop the heaviness he carried with him. Scully analyzed the fabric looking for answers, but it didn’t get them closer. She approached Mulder with the only thing she had left in her arsenal, to go to him bare, with raw emotion. 

“Mulder, it’s not Samantha and whoever that little girl really is, we’ll find her.”

“How?” he asked as if the breath was stolen from his lungs.

“I don’t know, but I do know you. Why don’t you go home and get some sleep,” Scully asked and  Mulder chuckled at the suggestion. Scully could do nothing, but share in the absurdity.  He reached for her and rested his head at her stomach, his arm firmly around her waist. She reciprocated in kind, hugging his back and patting his head. She knew it wasn’t enough, but it was all she had. 

*

With a bag of Chinese food under one arm Scully lightly rapped on the door marked with a brass coated 42. Mulder’s muffled “It’s open” came in response and she entered. The room was dark with the exception of the glow of the fishtank and the television. Entering into the main living room the smell of dampness and the stench of rotting food hit Scully in the face.  Mulder was surrounded by dusty old files and photographs decorating his coffee table. Scully set the food down at his desk and unwrapped a fresh can of fish food she had in her pocket, tapping some flakes into the tank. The Mollys quickly floating to the top to gobble the rainbow. 

“You weren’t letting anyone go hungry tonight,” Mulder remarked. 

“I remember you saying you had run out of fish food and by the look on your face when you left the office I knew you weren’t feeding yourself.”

Mulder gave her a nod and a half smile. His ghosts drew at his face and sunk in his eyes. John L. Roche had played with Mulder’s mind and if Mulder hadn’t left Roche’s brain matter on an abandoned school bus Scully was prepared to string him up and torture him with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch. There was no justice for a man as reprehensible as Roche. Scully had seen Mulder in many compromising positions, but none ever as vulnerable as with Roche towering over him, all the cards or in this case hearts, in his hand. Roche had been inside Mulder’s head, a place that was meant for her travels alone and all she could do was be a bystander as Mulder unraveled, separating like the fibers of the little girls’ dresses Roche used to make his hearts. 

As they ate by the television light, Scully grabbing the corner of the couch by the fish tank, Mulder sitting on the floor with his legs underneath the coffee table, Scully couldn’t help but feel a divide created between the science she knew and Mulder’s relentless pursuit for that beyond man’s explanation. That which bound them together in one case stretched at their seams in another. And Skinner, making her responsible for Mulder’s actions. She didn’t know what to do with that. 

The program she hadn’t been paying attention to on the television ended and Mulder put away the dishes. When he returned he laid down on the couch, resting his head on a pillow that leaned against Scully’s thigh and accidentally kicking a random object off the side table and replacing it with his feet. Closing his heavy eyelids, his hands rested underneath his cheek. Scully slouched down, closing her own eyes, her fingers playing in his hair, sending him to a deep dreamless slumber.

Mulder finally rose from the couch sometime after nine in the morning his back stiff from the cramped position. Scully was gone, but as he headed to the kitchen to make coffee he realized so were his dirty dishes. Mulder smiled and got ready for work.

*

Mundo Gira

Scully wasn’t enjoying fishing around the dirt analyzing fungus on a dead goat anymore than listening to Mulder’s attempt at Spanish. Although him screaming Maria was rather thrilling and if he broke into full on West Side Story she may have danced along. The mystery behind the unexplained death that Mulder used to get her out into no man’s land was finally revealed. They were chasing a potential Fortean transient- bright flash in a sky. Scully wasn’t in the mood to be there and no one appeared to want them there, but she had secrets of her own.  An old friend of hers, a man she had a crush on as a young girl in San Diego had recently contacted her to tell her about his new job in D.C. When she mentioned yesterday that she would be flying to Fresno on a case he thought they could meet up since he was out in California selling his house. So naturally she was avoiding him like he was el chupacabra. Which if he was, Mulder would be excited to meet him. 

More mysterious than either of those scenarios was why Mulder’s insistence on investigating lights in the sky and rain the color of Prince albums wasn’t giving her patience its usual brand of irritation.  Instead she found herself enjoying the pleasures of the flesh of a freshly cracked sunflower seed nestled between Mulder’s teeth. Scully convinced herself it was the sleepless nights and late hours causing her to mistake the flutter in her stomach when she first saw Mulder every morning. That she simply misconstrued the desire to hear his voice every time her phone rang and any longing for a physical closeness that didn’t yet exist. She explained it all away believing it had something more to do with Mulder’s indestructibility out in Tunguska and the ease he had putting his internal vulnerability on display for her to witness. Yet, staring into Mulder’s eyes in the dark California night she could feel the heat between them, but the ache it was producing was for Mulder to stop chasing aliens and el chupacabras and start taking this pathogen seriously. She met his annoyance in her questions with equal fervor, annoyed herself with his denial of the science he needed in his life.  

Scully retreated back to the lab and discovered a new strain of fungus which made Mulder’s internal Ouija board circle the word alien. She needed him to focus and she needed him to stop breathing so heavily in the phone. This had happened before and it was happening again. Another man entered her life and Mulder’s eyes darkened, his voice deepened, and his cologne emitted a sweetness that made her freely relinquish her personal space and not get angered when he ordered her to get on her cell and assemble a Hazmat team.

Their first flight back to D.C. wasn’t until noon and to her surprise her friend Ken had driven the six and a half hours to see her. Mulder was distracted sending water samples from the lake back to the lab in D.C. in hopes to find fragments of meteorites, so he didn’t pay much attention when she told him she’d meet him on the plane. 

Thick blonde wavy hair was the first thing she noticed about Ken, the second his surfer’s body. She smiled warmly as he graciously held her chair for her and reminisced on some good times they shared. Ken didn’t challenge her opinions and not being faced with countless contrary arguments was refreshing. At the end of a charming breakfast Ken drove her to the airport. He lingered for a kiss and she considered it, too many years had passed without one, but she couldn’t get Mulder’s disapproving judgmental thoughts out of her head. She left Ken with a hug and a promise to meet up again in D.C. if she could break away from her workload. As she boarded the plane and saw Mulder grinning to see her, saving her the window seat and sharing with her the historic roots of el chupacabra as they practiced what they would say to Skinner, she knew Ken would never stand a chance of seeing her again.  

The pace of the cases and lack of sleep were taking its toll on Scully. When she did sleep, her dreams were overpowering. Filled with frightening thoughts of a mass smallpox infection, sick children, burning bodies, being trapped in her own coffin inside an alien spaceship and Mulder alive inside a corpse shell. None of it made sense, but it kept her uneasy and as quickly as the dreams came, Scully soon forgot them.

After debriefing Skinner on the el chupacabra case, Mulder and Scully headed back into their office. 

“Outer space Mulder?” It wasn’t bad enough that Mulder was chasing el chupacabra, now he was edging in on her wheelhouse.

“Didn’t we firmly establish that this enzyme was from a meteorite?” Mulder argued as he filed a copy of the case in the cabinet. “I think all the evidence points to that.”

“Sounds like conjecture to me,” Scully said folding her arms.

“Where do you believe it came from?” Mulder asked slamming the file door closed and facing Scully. 

Scully stood her ground unflinching. “The facts are inconclusive.”

Mulder’s fingertips pressed into his temples. “Why- why do you have to doubt my theories and conclusions at every turn?”

“My job as defined to me was to put your theories to the test of science.”

“You remind me of it every day.”

“Would you rather I lie... that I don’t do my job?”

“No,” Mulder sulked.

Scully backed off softening her voice, running her hand down his arm. “Mulder, we haven’t had a break in almost three months. The past three cases we were there at five AM. The case before this one you didn’t sleep at all.”

“That’s not it Scully.” Mulder held her fingers tight as they met with the palm of his hand and the feelings it produced terrified him. He couldn’t explain what was happening because he wasn’t sure himself. What he did know was ever since he came back from Tunguska their connection had... evolved. Scully wasn’t just in his heart, he could hear her thoughts in his mind, feel her soul as if it fused with his. Then sometimes it would shut off abruptly, almost violently and it would leave him craving until the next time it happened again. In the back of his mind he questioned the root of the connection he had with Roche and his new understanding of Scully because Mulder didn’t believe in coincidences. 

“Mulder, then what is it?” He could read the concern in her eyes. If she was feeling even half of what he was feeling, the layers and complexities. Could all that possibly be inside her for him? 

He closed his eyes and pictured leaning down into her lips. The electricity coursed through him at a speed that made him take a quick intake of air. He had to remind himself of all the reasons that shouldn’t happen. He answered abruptly, “You’re right. I need more sleep.”


End file.
